A third nonprofit that was awarded money through EPA’s green banking program has filed a lawsuit against Citibank for freezing its accounts for nearly three weeks, escalating a legal clash with the Trump administration over its moves to claw back Biden-era climate funding.
Power Forward Communities, which was awarded $2 billion in Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund money last year, filed suit Tuesday afternoon in a U.S. district court in New York, where Citibank is headquartered. The group uses the money to run an energy efficiency program for housing.
Tim Mayopoulos, CEO of the nonprofit, said he brought the suit “reluctantly.”
“We have attempted for weeks to get Citibank to explain why it has not followed instructions to execute our transactions,” he said in an emailed statement to POLITICO’s E&E News. “Despite repeated efforts to get the bank to engage with us, it refused to give us any explanation.”
EPA transferred $14 billion to Citibank last year to administer the “green bank” program, which Congress authorized in 2022 to expand financing for renewable energy and zero-carbon buildings and transportation. The bank is also responsible for running a second Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program aimed at nonprofit lenders in low-income communities. All of those accounts have been frozen since at least Feb. 18.
Citibank’s contracts with the nonprofit groups require it to give them access to the funding unless EPA retakes “exclusive control” of the accounts. It can do so only in strict instances of waste, fraud and abuse.
The move came after Climate United, which received the largest grant under the green banking program, filed suit over the weekend against both EPA and Citibank. Then on Monday it asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to order Citibank to release the funds as litigation proceeds. Judge Tanya Chutkan will hear testimony on that request Wednesday afternoon.
Power Forward Communities and the Coalition for Green Capital, which filed its own suit Monday in a federal court in New York, have only named Citibank as a defendant in their lawsuits, opting not to target EPA.
The two nonprofits said they’ve been given no information about why Citibank has frozen their accounts. The bank’s agreement with the groups prevents it from halting payments without formal steps by EPA.
“We entered into a contract with the federal government in good faith, and as a result, we have obligations we must meet, and commitments to the American people we intend to keep. We had no choice but to go to court,” said Mayopoulos.
President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin have targeted Power Forward Communities because former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams briefly served as an adviser for one of its founding partners. Trump mentioned the group in his address to Congress last week.
