EPA Chief Seeks Return of $20 Billion in Climate Funding

Lee Zeldin, then a New York congressman nominated for EPA chief, speaks during his Senate confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on Jan. 16. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said the agency will try to retrieve about $20 billion granted to environmental groups before President Donald Trump was inaugurated in January.

In a video posted to the social media platform X on Wednesday, Zeldin said the EPA decided to rescind the grants for climate and clean-energy projects mainly because of concerns over lack of oversight and transparency.

“The days of irresponsibly shoveling boatloads of cash to far-left activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over,” the EPA head said. “The American public deserves a more transparent and accountable government than what transpired these past four years.”

In his video, Zeldin said that the EPA found that roughly $20 billion in taxpayer funds were transferred during the previous administration to an unnamed external financial institution.

The bank oversaw the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was created under the Inflation Reduction Act and through which the EPA awarded the $20 billion in grants to eight entities.

Zeldin said he believed the financial agent agreement with the bank needed to be terminated immediately and called for the bank to return all the funds.

He alleged that the eight entities were tasked with funding nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other groups at their discretion and with “far less transparency.”

“This scheme was the first of its kind in EPA history,” Zeldin alleged. “It was purposefully designed to obligate all of the money in a rushed job with reduced oversight.”

According to the EPA chief, just under $7 billion of that money was sent to the Climate United Fund. The fund, according to its official website, is a “national coalition of non-profits investing in solutions that tackle America’s toughest economic and environmental problems.”

In an April 2024 statement, the previous EPA stated that “Climate United Fund’s program will focus on investing in harder-to-reach market segments like consumers, small businesses, small farms, community facilities, and schools—with at least 60 percent of its investments in low-income and disadvantaged communities, 20 percent in rural communities, and 10 percent in tribal communities.”

In the video, Zeldin also pointed to a Project Veritas video released in December 2024 in which Brent Efron, special assistant in the EPA’s policy office during the Biden administration, appears to suggest that the agency was rushing to distribute billions in funding before the incoming Trump administration takes office.

“Now we’re just trying to get the money out as fast as possible before they come in and stop it all,” Efron told an undercover Project Veritas reporter. “It truly feels like we’re on the Titanic and we’re throwing like gold bars off the edge.”

Zeldin said he would be referring the alleged actions by the EPA under the previous administration to the EPA Office of Inspector General and working to investigate the matter with the Justice Department.

The EPA chief said that, under the Trump administration, the agency will take a zero-tolerance stance on waste and abuse and will review “every penny that has gone out the door.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to the eight entities that were awarded the funding for comment.