Several major green non-governmental organizations are reportedly struggling to stay afloat now that the Trump administration is taking away their taxpayer funding, according to Bloomberg News.
Climate groups like Rewiring America, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice and the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) told Bloomberg News that their organizations are having to make staff cuts and reduce spending after the Trump administration rescinded their federal funding. Citing fiscal responsibility and a shift away from former President Joe Biden’s massive climate agenda, the Trump administration has terminated a multitude of green energy initiatives and government funding for climate nonprofits.
“It’s disheartening and stressful,” Beverly Wright, founder and executive director of New Orleans-based Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, told Bloomberg News. “We hired a lot of people we had to let go. … I thank God we hadn’t hired even more.”
All three nonprofits were set to receive millions or billions in taxpayer funding through Biden-era programs and grants, according to Bloomberg News.
Rewiring America was poised to receive nearly $500 million from a multi-billion-dollar program created by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), according to Bloomberg. The organization is a member of a broader politically-connected coalition that the Biden Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) selected to receive approximately $2 billion in public funds.
The Trump EPA froze the funds in February and referred the GGRF program to the agency’s inspector general over “potential fraud concerns,” according to the EPA. Several of the green groups waiting to receive the funds in turn filed lawsuits against the agency, arguing that the Biden EPA had acted appropriately in distributing them initially.
Since access to the taxpayer cash is now insecure, Rewiring America has reportedly axed 36 staff members and has scaled back its work, according to Bloomberg News. The cuts reportedly amount to more than 25% of its staff.
The Deep South Center for Environmental Justice reportedly laid off eight employees after a $13 million federal grant was withdrawn in February, according to Bloomberg News. The group reportedly was planning to use the funding to drastically expand nonprofit’s work to address climate change issues.
RMI also reportedly cut about 10% of its staff in May after it lost taxpayer funding and now has less than 700 employees, according to the publication. The nonprofit has reportedly had a total of five federal agreements recently terminated, though the axed federal grants only amounted to a portion of the nonprofit’s funding, according to Bloomberg News. The charitable foundations financing the group are reportedly also dealing with instability, according to the outlet.
“Elections have consequences,” Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment at the Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Renewable energy raises the price of electricity and transportation for Americans and the nonprofits that promote these renewables also work to raise American’s costs. I sympathize with people who have lost their jobs, but the renewables are not the way to make America competitive.”
Rewiring America, RMI, and the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
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