At least 130 climate- and clean-energy-related contracts are among the more than 5,500 that the Trump administration has canceled so far as part of its dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
POLITICO’s E&E News obtained Monday a full list of the terminated contracts, which may be subject to change.
They include contracts aimed at reducing deforestation, supporting climate-smart agriculture or mangrove restoration and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the waste sector.
At least a dozen of the canceled contracts focus on clean or renewable energy efforts. Programs focused on enhancing energy security in Ukraine are also among those with canceled contracts.
The end of the contracts will affect projects in countries around the world, from Colombia to South Africa to Indonesia.
President Donald Trump ordered a freeze on foreign assistance when he entered office and called for a review of that aid to ensure it aligned with his America First agenda. But the immediate halt to that funding drew an outcry from people in the development community who warned it was putting lives at risk.
Since then, USAID has been at the center of a court battle to get aid flowing again. In the meantime, officials have been issuing tranches of contract cancellations.
They include a $1.4 million grant to support South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Partnership. The initiative, announced at global climate talks in 2021, is part of an effort to deliver billions of dollars in investments from wealthy nations to help developing countries shift their energy systems from coal to clean energy.
Other canceled contracts include a $57 million project to leverage public and private finance to support Colombia’s targets to adapt to climate change and cut emissions. Colombia, a major coal producer, has drafted a $40 billion climate investment plan to help the country transition away from fossil fuels, but that effort has been challenged by Trump’s retreat from global climate engagement.
There’s also a $15 million effort to conserve coastal ecosystems for climate adaptation and $4.7 million to a project that uses satellite data to monitor climate change impacts across the Amazon Basin. The latter project is one of several canceled under SERVIR, a joint initiative involving NASA.
Much of the support USAID offers to climate projects comes in the form of technical or regulatory assistance that can help draw in private sector investments. The agency also does a lot of work to help climate-vulnerable countries build resilience to the effects of more severe drought, heat and rising seas.
The loss of that support could have long-lasting consequences.
“It means more people are going to be exposed to the impacts of climate change and have no tools to address that, it’s going to mean more carbon in the atmosphere and it’s probably going to mean more forest and biodiversity loss because they were moving pieces across these four strategies,” said Jake Schmidt, senior director of international climate at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
