Grants for electric trucks in LA remain frozen in Trump effort to defund green energy

The Trump administration has frozen $250 million in grants to a nonprofit helping companies replace diesel trucks at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, part of a broad federal effort to claw back $20 billion in green energy funding.

The program by Climate United, announced last October, would offer affordable leases for new electric heavy-duty trucks operated by small fleets and individual truckers serving the ports.

Communities near the ports, including Wilmington, San Pedro and Long Beach, have been battling for years to clean up noxious fumes that waft into their neighborhoods from the long lines of trucks carrying cargo to and from the massive ports.

The freezing of the funds comes after California had to abandon a regulation that phased out diesel trucks because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Donald Trump wouldn't approve it.

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The grant, which would have funded about 500 electric trucks, remains frozen by Citibank, which holds the funds, as a legal dispute plays out between the EPA, the bank and Climate United, a nonprofit based in Maryland.

“We don't have any money at all, not even operational money,” Climate United spokesperson Brooke Durham told CalMatters in an interview. “We are having to raise philanthropic grants to be able to cover operational expenses and payroll…. and then all of the projects are in limbo.”

The EPA had threatened to terminate the contracts, and climate groups sued over not being able to access the money when it was frozen. The groups argued that the EPA and the bank were illegally withholding the money because Congress had appropriated it through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. A federal judge ordered Citibank to pay some of the funds, but then an appeals court blocked that decision as the case continues.

In a March announcement, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin accused the $20 billion federal green energy grant program of "misconduct, conflicts of interest, and potential fraud…I have taken action to terminate these grants riddled with self-dealing and wasteful spending." The agency, however, has not produced evidence of those claims.

Zeldin has repeatedly referenced a video by Project Veritas, a conservative group known for recording undercover videos, which secretly filmed a man it said was an EPA employee under the Biden administration saying the agency was “throwing gold bars off the Titanic,” meaning it was seeking to disburse funds after Donald Trump was elected but hadn't taken office yet.

Known as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund but also called the “green bank,” the grants are awarded to nonprofits, banks and other groups. The $20 billion was awarded for a variety of projects nationwide.

Climate United representatives said Zeldin's accusations don't apply to their programs; the money was allocated before Trump was elected.

Climate United had launched other programs nationwide in addition to the California electric trucks program, according to the lawsuit. The EPA also froze its grants for $31.8 million in loans for solar power projects in rural communities in Arkansas and $63 million for solar power plant projects in partnership with tribal governments and communities. Its initial tribal and community solar projects were supposed to be located in Eastern Oregon and Idaho, according to the suit.

In addition, $30 million to help communities plan projects that "improved energy independence, cut pollution and lower costs" was frozen. Climate United had awarded $6.35 million to 22 projects in 18 states, focusing on tribal communities.

When asked about the freezing of the funds for the port trucks, the EPA press office told CalMatters in an email that it “was not a party to grant agreements with subrecipients within the Biden-Harris ‘Gold Bar’ scheme, so we wouldn’t have that information.”

The freezing of the money has meant that the electric truck program cannot move forward at the nation’s busiest port complex. The investment was seen as a significant step toward electrifying California’s diesel trucks, which are among the biggest sources of air pollution in the LA basin.

The grants were intended to help small operators purchase cleaner vehicles in an industry that operates on a “razor thin profit model,” said Matt Schrap, chief executive of the Harbor Trucking Association.

Many small operators can’t afford electric trucks. An electric big rig can cost $400,000, compared to less than half that for a new diesel truck. What’s more, it’s often too difficult for small operators to get them financed, as they are a relatively new technology. Because there is currently no used market for them, banks have trouble assessing their value.

Residents of port communities have long complained of health effects, including asthma and headaches, from diesel trucks, which emit large quantities of soot and other pollutants linked to respiratory illnesses.

Cleaning up diesel exhaust “is a literal case of life and death for a lot of our community members and our loved ones,” Paola Vargas, a Carson resident and organizer with nonprofit East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, told CalMatters in December. “Every day matters. Every day we don’t have (truck emissions) rules…is a day wasted and a day of harmful impacts for us.”

California air quality regulators consider transitioning to zero-emission vehicles an important part of cleaning the state’s severe air pollution and reducing the greenhouse gasses that cause climate change.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.