The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday it’s ending the $7 billion “Solar for All” program, meaning the federal government is set to take back more than $156 million earmarked for low-income Ohioans to buy solar panels for their houses or join solar cooperatives.
Lee Zeldin, director of the agency, called the program a “grift” in an announcement on social media, and said federal law passed last month ended the program.
Clean energy advocates said they doubt the legality of the administration’s power to nullify contracts stemming from grants legally appropriated by Congress three years ago. Regardless, they fear a drawn out court battle, even if judges rule against the administration in the long run, could kill the effort.
The Solar for All program promised solar panels for hundreds of thousands of low- to moderate-income Americans and those exposed to climate risks like air pollution or flooding. The program required that projects reduce end users’ electric costs by at least 20%.
Loss of the program is a gut punch both to the recipients who won’t receive the promised electric savings, but also advocates of a world of distributed and decentralized renewable energy.
“Everyone is required, in executing on this program, to save those being served 20% on their electric bills, while we are simultaneously seeing 15% increases on electric bills across Ohio,” said Joe Flarida, executive director of Power a Clean Future Ohio, part of a coalition administering Solar for All money across the Midwest, in an interview.
“We’re seeing huge increases in the amount that folks are being paid to keep their lights on. And when we’re dealing with an energy affordability crisis, the Trump administration is moving to cancel a program that is explicitly designed to save people money.”
Two projects won Solar for All money in Ohio
President Joe Biden signed the Solar for All program into law in August 2022 as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, his signature climate legislation.
The legislation created a $27 billion pot of money to be spent reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and other air pollutants through both public and private financing.
The state government was one of about 60 recipients of that money, with $156 million in the bank. Lindsey Sanders, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Air Quality Development Authority, which oversaw the money, said the department is “aware” of Zeldin’s comments to end the program. She said they are “actively monitoring and evaluating the impact on our next steps.”
The state program was designed to enable low-income Ohioans to access solar whether they own or rent, and the money can be leveraged to free up private capital as well.
“The program will create opportunities for Ohio’s residential customers in low- to moderate-income households and disadvantaged communities, achieve meaningful energy savings, relieve high levels of energy burden, and improve air quality and economic prosperity in traditionally underserved areas of Ohio,” a project description reads.
Meanwhile, a coalition of nonprofits spanning eight states (Ohio, Kansas, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York) received their own $156 million pot.
Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Akron, Dayton and Cuyahoga County were all subrecipients on the grant, Flarida said. In a joint statement, those cities mayors urged Trump to reverse course.
“Electricity bills and broader cost of living expenses are rising, and the Trump Administration is cutting a program that would save participating Ohio households, on average, nearly $400 per year on their utility bills,” they said. “Terminating Solar for All funding, including grants already awarded, is harmful. It strips away critical planned resources for home energy upgrades, including rooftop solar, to address energy affordability in our communities.”
Thus far the Solar for All program has been limited to agency-level rulemaking, grant applications and program planning. Construction has not yet begun.
Along with rooftop solar, the money also would have funded what’s referred to as “community solar,” where a limited group of people share ownership and output from a small array of solar panels.
“They would have installed a large array of a parking lot of an apartment complex, for example, and then the power would have been distributed to each of the residents within there,” said Mryia Williams, a program developer with Solar United Neighbors, which provided assistance with the multistate grant.
“I think that the $156 million for Ohio would be a whole lot of money for us to replace.”
Other Trump policies hamstrung Solar for All
The Solar for All cancelation is but the latest in a series of aggressive moves against wind and solar power by the Trump administration and rollback of the agency’s legal authority to fight global warming.
A near-universal federal funding freeze implemented earlier this year (and intermittently blocked by the courts) gummed up planning earlier this year, Flarida said.
Plus, Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” included language that killed a solar tax credit that could have been applied with some of the Solar for All projects.
