Climate United received $7 billion of the $20 billion distributed by the Biden admin at the eleventh hour. Critics say the money is going to waste.

A politically connected left-wing nonprofit aims to draw on tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to finance a new solar energy project which they claim will save Arkansas’s university system tens of millions of dollars while drastically reducing carbon emissions — but the project’s backers can’t, or won’t, show the math behind their rosy projections.

Proponents of the project — 18 separate solar projects, mostly in rural areas — claim it could save the University of Arkansas System over $120 million in energy costs over 25 years and generate over four billion kilowatt-hours of clean electricity over 40 years; the equivalent of removing over 7 billion passenger car miles from the roads or planting 46 million trees.

To get the project off the ground, the left-wing nonprofit Climate United announced in October that it would provide $31.8 million in federal dollars for pre-construction financing — for things like making utility interconnection deposits, securing American-made equipment, and acquiring land. The taxpayer-financed loan is supposed to come from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, or GGRF, a pot of $20 billion for green-energy projects established by the so-called Inflation Reduction Act under the Biden administration.

But opponents contend the Biden-era green-energy banking plan is a waste of taxpayer resources aimed at standing up environmentalist fantasies and funneling billions of dollars to Democrats’ progressive allies. If green-energy projects like the Arkansas solar installation are as efficient and valuable as their supports say, they should stand on their own without government subsidies, critics of the spending say.

Free-market energy experts also cast doubt on the projections touted by the backers of the Arkansas solar project, noting that they’ve provided little information about how they calculated them. National Review reached out to the groups behind the project asking them to detail how they calculated their estimates — for the most part, they did not.

Money for the Arkansas solar project and other green-energy projects funded by the GGRF is now tied up in a legal dispute after Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin vowed to claw it back, claiming in a video last month that “the Biden administration knew they were wasting it.” Zeldin cited an “extremely disturbing video” published by Project Veritas in December of a Biden EPA official discussing getting “the money out as fast as possible” before President Donald Trump resumed office and his allies could stop it.

“It truly feels like we’re on the Titanic, we’re throwing gold bars off the edge,” he said.

The FBI launched a criminal probe in February, the Washington Post reported, and some of the groups awarded GGRF money had their accounts frozen.

On Tuesday, Zeldin announced he’d notified the fund recipients that their grant agreements had been terminated because they were “riddled with self-dealing and wasteful spending.” One of the recipients told Politico that Zeldin’s move was “unauthorized and unlawful.”

Climate United sued the EPA on Saturday over its frozen funds. On Tuesday, a Climate United lawyer wrote a letter to the EPA stating that it “has impounded the appropriated funds in violation of federal law,” according to Utility Dive, an industry news site.

It’s unclear how much of the money the Trump administration will get back. Most of it appears to be held in more than 100 Citibank accounts. A source told the Free Press this month that the contracts the Biden administration signed with the eight nonprofits awarded GGRF dollars contain a trigger clause that will cause the money to be immediately released if the Trump administration attempts to recoup it.

In a statement Wednesday, Citibank said it “will of course comply with any binding instructions from the federal government.”

Progressive groups say Zeldin’s attacks on the GGRF are “misguided.” The leftwing Center on Budget and Policy Priorities called the program “a transformative federal investment in climate justice” driven by locals who understand their communities best.

But conservative critics and free-market energy experts who spoke with National Review described the GGRF as little more than a “slush fund” for Biden’s Democratic friends. The green projects the money is aimed at, they say, would have only a microscopic impact at best on the “climate crisis,” a key plank in the Biden administration’s justification for the spending. The projects, they said, can’t satisfy any real cost-benefit test.

Critics also take issue with what they say is a lack of oversight — the Biden administration awarded the $20 billion to eight nonprofits, including Climate United, who are responsible for vetting and choosing projects to invest in, a scenario ripe for abuse and cronyism. Biden EPA Administrator Michael Regan once called the IRA funding “walking around money.”

“There’s no scrutiny, there’s no oversight, there’s no transparency in this entire process,” said Thomas Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research, a free-market nonprofit. “We are just burning taxpayer cash.”

“The federal government should absolutely not be funding any of these projects,” Pyle added. “They shouldn’t be choosing what types of energy people use. They’re not grid operators and they’re not producers.”

When reached on her cell phone, Climate United CEO Beth Bafford referred questions to her nonprofit’s spokeswoman. The spokeswoman declined to answer specific questions about the status of their GGRF funding, why federal taxpayers should be involved in the Arkansas project, and what oversight would be provided to ensure taxpayer money is used appropriately, referring National Review to a press release instead.

Frank Maisano, an energy expert with Bracewell, a law firm that represents energy-sector clients, agreed that the green-energy projects are “irrelevant” in terms of affecting the global climate. But he disagrees that the spending is wasteful.

“A waste of money is someone spending $700 on a hammer,” he said. “Investing in projects that drive other success or drive technologies forward, which later pay for themselves, and loan guarantees that then turn around and give the federal government a profit, eventually, those things are not a waste of government money. They’re just a different priority from some conservatives who don’t think you should be doing it.”

Questioning the Projections

The GGRF, which was established under the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 amid unanimous Republican opposition, was aimed at providing billions of dollars to green-banking groups that would in turn provide direct and indirect financial assistance to renewable-energy projects. The goal was to mobilize about seven dollars of private investment for every federal dollar spent, according to a Congressional Research Service report.

Biden’s EPA established a process for interested organizations to compete for funding, and in April 2024 the agency announced the eight organizations awarded money. Climate United was awarded $6.97 billion, more than any other group.

Climate United hadn’t existed prior to the passage of the IRA; it was created in early 2023 when three groups — Calvert Impact, Community Preservation Corporation, and Self-Help — united to compete for the EPA funding, according to the nonprofit’s website.

Climate United claims to “remove financial barriers to clean technologies so every American can benefit from good-paying jobs, lower energy bills, and better public health.”

Bafford, the CEO, was previously a community organizer for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and later served as a special assistant to the White House Office of Management and Budget during the drafting of the Affordable Care Act, online bios say. She described herself in an interview last year as being “obsessed with electric school buses.”

Since 2007, Bafford has donated more than $11,500 to leftwing political groups and prominent Democrats, including Obama, Biden, and Hillary Clinton, Federal Election Commission records show.

Climate United’s chief strategy and partnerships officer, Phil Aroneanu, previously worked for far-left Senator Bernie Sander’s presidential campaign, a 2016 news report said.

The nonprofit’s board includes a variety of left-wing environmentalists, activists, and finance professionals, including: Phil Angelides, California’s former state treasurer; Dolores Huerta, a far-left labor organizer and feminist activist; and Patrice Willoughby, a racial-equity advocate with the NAACP and an Obama administration alumni.

Under the IRA, all GGRF grants were to be disbursed by September 30, 2024, and per a financial agreement were to be held in Citibank accounts that grantees could draw on. In a September interview with Impact Alpha, a sustainable-investing news site, Bafford said, “It feels like we’ve finally reached the starting line and we’re ready to get to work.”

On October 1, Climate United announced its first investment: the Arkansas solar project.

The solar project didn’t originate with Climate United, however.

A couple of years back, the University of Arkansas System, which signed a commitment in 2007 to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions to zero by 2040, put out a request for proposals for the solar project. The solar committee awarded it to Scenic Hill Solar of North Little Rock in May 2023, according to a news report on the company’s website.

Scenic Hill Solar’s CEO is Bill Halter, Arkansas’s former Democratic lieutenant governor.

Per the agreement, Scenic Hill Solar was to provide all capital costs for the $100 million project, and the UA System committed to buying its output, according to the news report. No university money was to be used to fund the project.

Climate United, Scenic Hill Solar, and UA System leaders praised the project last year.

Halter called it the “most ambitious and complex solar power development in Arkansas history.” Bafford said it would “position Arkansas as a leader in our clean energy future.”

Donald Bobbitt, president of the UA System, said the project would significantly reduce energy costs and “the savings will help us to continue to deliver world-class education to students and make larger impacts overall on our campuses, divisions, and units.”

But none of the three — Climate United, Scenic Hill Solar, or the UA System — were willing to answer most questions posed by National Review about the project.

When asked to explain how it came to its estimate that the project would save the UA System $120 million over 25 years, Climate United said only that it was based on the university’s existing energy bills and generation estimates of a power capacity of about 61 megawatts. Climate United didn’t say how much of the university system’s power is expected to be provided by solar and how much will still come from traditional sources.

The firm did not respond to questions about whether its savings estimate includes the social cost of carbon or how much revenue is expected to be generated by selling solar power back to utilities. Halter, the Scenic Hill Solar CEO, has acknowledged that the project likely wouldn’t have moved forward under Arkansas’s since-updated net-metering policy, which provides reduced credits for solar producers — the project qualified for higher rates by meeting a September 30 deadline, the Arkansas Times reported.

In an email, a UA System spokesman directed questions about estimated cost savings from the project to Scenic Hill Solar. When reached on his cell phone, Halter said he was in a meeting and couldn’t talk. The company did not respond to emailed questions from National Review.

It appears, however, that the estimated cost savings and power generation numbers have already been adjusted down. When the project was first announced in 2023, Bobbitt said it would save the university system $149 million over 25 years; project backers now say $120 million. And the initial plan was for 24 solar plants to produce 74 megawatts of electricity to the systems; the new projections say 18 plants will produce 61 megawatts.

“Forecasts are a dime a dozen,” said Pyle. “They make for a good press release.”

“It’s a whole host of rosy, wishful thinking. But we shouldn’t be subsidizing with taxpayer dollars wishful thinking,” he said, adding that if the projections don’t pan out, the university system could end up spending more on energy than they otherwise would. “The university should probably focus its attention on educating students and utilities take care of their electricity needs. They’ve been doing it for a really long time, and they have a pretty good idea of how to do it well.”

When asked about Climate United’s project in Arkansas, a spokesman for Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders told National Review in an email that, “The United States is more than $36 million in debt and the Governor supports President Trump’s mission to reduce out-of-control deficit spending while reinvesting in reliable, affordable, American-made energy.”

‘All of It Is a Waste’

In addition to the Arkansas solar project, Climate United has also announced its intention to spend $250 million to fund the manufacturing of 500 battery-powered trucks for small trucking businesses to lease, $10.8 million for pre-construction of solar projects on tribal lands in Oregon and Idaho, and to provide a $1.5 million loan to retrofit an 85-unit affordable housing building in Portland, Ore., with green technology.

Ben Zycher, an energy expert with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said the GGRF spending is a waste. “Not just some of it. All of it is a waste,” he said.

“If some private investor wants to invest in this, let them go right ahead, have at it,” he said. “But the fact that you have to subsidize it tells you the private sector is not interested in it, because . . . it’s just uncompetitive. It’s just that simple.”

Pyle agreed. “If these projects and these resources are that good, that valuable, that inexpensive, they should stand on their own,” he said.

Maisano countered that the point of the federal spending is to invest in an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy and to help launch new technologies. “There is always an upside to renewables — the power is free,” he said. But he also acknowledged that renewable-energy project projections don’t always come to fruition and that newer technology can quickly make them obsolete.

“Because these projects are riskier, their technologies are not as proven, with any of these technologies you sometimes need a grant or a loan guarantee to balance out the risk that others will take in financing,” he said. “It’s how it’s always been for us. It’s how we moved fracking technology to the state it’s in now.”

The U.S. solar industry has experienced record growth in recent years, and accounted for 66 percent of all new electricity-generating capacity added to the U.S. grid last year, according to a Solar Energy Industries Association report released on Tuesday.

But Zycher and Pyle pointed to examples of prominent solar projects that have underperformed, including the Ivanpah project in California, which is shutting down after only about ten years of service and 15 years early, and the $1 billion Crescent Dune plant near Las Vegas, which Popular Mechanics called “an Obsolete, Expensive Flop.”

In California, state regulators and even Governor Gavin Newsom are now blaming solar incentives for shifting costs and saddling non-solar customers with higher energy bills. And some solar companies are struggling to survive. Sunnova Energy, a rooftop solar company, is fighting to stay afloat, with its CEO calling the current business environment “terrible.” A competitor, SunPower, filed for bankruptcy protection last year, according to news reports.

“The large scale deployment of renewable energy resources, particularly wind and solar, are only happening because of the . . . federal subsidies, because of state mandates,” Pyle said. “To me, wind and solar have a place in the energy mix, but it should be market driven, and it should be in the areas where it makes the most sense.”

Myron Ebell, an energy expert and chairman of the American Lands Council, said that if the GGRF money has been officially obligated, it could be difficult or impossible to claw back. And it’s unlikely the Trump administration can put new requirements on how its spent.

But, he said, it’s important for the EPA, the DOJ, and congressional Republicans to expose the questionable projects and any corruption they uncover.

“I don’t think Congress can attach strings, but Congress can have every person involved in the chain of giving out the cash to a hearing and put them under oath and have them describe how they did it,” he said. “And they can have every recipient come in and on a regular basis report on how they are spending the money.”