A federal appeals court dealt a blow Monday night to nonprofits looking to gain access to $20 billion in climate grants frozen by the Trump administration.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals chose to maintain its stay — for now — of a district judge’s order that would allow Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund recipients unfettered access to their award funds and would bar EPA from clawing the money back from Citibank. EPA froze the funding in February and then declared the awards terminated last month.
The appellate court will now consider EPA’s appeal of the district court’s order, with the agency and six nonprofit plaintiffs filing briefs ahead of a May 19 hearing. That means the appellate court could decide by late May whether EPA has the authority to terminate $20 billion in awards under the climate law’s green banking program
Recipients have warned that they are at risk of going out of business in the meantime. Climate United Fund, a nonprofit that the Biden EPA charged with administering $7 billion for the green bank program, told the appeals court on April 22 that it had only secured enough loans and funding to stay afloat for one or two more weeks.
