Sunlight: The Best Disinfectant
EPA Director Zeldin’s reclamation effort, DOGE goes hunting for green waste, and the perfect analogy for Democrats’ faux outrage.
“Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” – Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
In September of 1641, after several years of trading with the Spanish colonies in the West Indies, the English merchant ship Royal Merchant was lost at sea less than 50 miles from the Cornwall coast on its return trip to London. The captain and about forty of his crew escaped with their lives. Eighteen men drowned.
An estimated 100,000 pounds of gold went to the bottom of the North Atlantic. No shortage of effort has been made to locate the ship, but all have failed. Years of accumulated layers of sand or sediment have kept its gold treasure – worth over $4 billion - hidden for centuries.
On February 12th, President Trump’s new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Director Lee Zeldin announced that his team had begun to find some of the very gold bars about which a shipwrecked prior administration staffer said only weeks early “it truly feels like we’re on the Titanic and we’re shoveling gold bars off the edge.” Two weeks later, it is clear Zeldin was just getting started.
Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) forensic techo nerds are in on the action. Zeldin and DOGE are on the hunt for green waste and abuse in places the Uniparty would rather they not look.
The blowback is shaping up to be epic. Beyond the immediate impact, we hope the consequences have lasting effects.
Count us among those who believe this is long overdue. The effort is not only likely to bear economic fruit, but we hope it sends a clear message to both political parties: you’re too wasteful, government is too bloated, and you’ve gotten away with it for too long at too great an expense to America’s wellbeing.
The $20 billion Zeldin announced in early February has the attention of the career EPA bureaucrats who have been advancing the “energy debacle transition.” What DOGE has been uncovering in other federal agencies infected for fifteen years with green ideology is spreading panic beyond EPA and environmental non-governmental organizations (eNGOs, aka, environmental non-profits). EcoLeftist media outlet Grist published this convenient GIS map with links to Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) projects across America the morning after Zeldin’s announcement in order to distract America from what he is uncovering.
Who was awarded the $20 billion Zeldin is looking for, and for what purposes? What other examples of green waste and abuse is DOGE uncovering? And where else might they shine some sunlight to flush out more cockroaches? Get out your flashlight and grab a can of Raid. (And make sure the latter is full. You’re gonna need it.)
We begin our story by shining some sunlight on the recipients of the $20 billion who are the subject of Zeldin’s headline gold reclamation effort. The money he is trying to claw back was authorized by Congress under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and awarded to “recipients” under the IRA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), specifically under two programs knowns as the National Clean Investment Fund and the Clean Communities Investment Accelerator. Below we list the recipients, award amounts and a brief description of each:
National Clean Investment Fund - $14 billion awarded to 3 NGOs
1. Climate United Fund ($6.97 billion)
Focuses on decarbonizing homes, small businesses, and community institutions while expanding consumer financing options for same.
2. Coalition for Green Capital ($5 billion)
Aims to establish a national network of green banks to finance clean energy projects, prioritizing low-income communities.
3. Power Forward Communities ($2 billion)
Targets energy-efficient retrofits for residential housing, with an emphasis on affordable housing.
Clean Communities Investment Accelerator - $6 billion awarded to 5 NGOs
1. Inclusiv ($1.87 billion)
Supports community development financial institutions (CDFIs) working on climate projects in rural, tribal, and low-income areas.
2. Justice Climate Fund ($1.89 billion)
Focuses on equitable clean energy investments in marginalized communities.
3. Appalachian Community Capital ($500 million)
Directs funds to coal-impacted regions in Appalachia for sustainable economic development.
4. Native CDFI Network ($400 million)
Funds clean energy and climate resilience projects in Native communities.
5. Opportunity Finance Network ($1.29 billion)
Provides capital to CDFIs for small-business and community clean energy initiatives.
The grants were intended to catalyze private capital for projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions such as home energy upgrades, nonreliable energy (e.g., “Solar for All”), and “clean” transportation in disadvantaged communities. Zeldin believes the funds were distributed with inadequate oversight and, citing concerns about accountability, has initiated efforts to recover them.
ENGO’s and Democrats in Congress are screaming bloody murder to try and stop Zeldin’s attempts. They may succeed, including through the courts, but their cries gave the game away.
Most of the recipients are community development-related eNGOs that have been around some years, but a few were clearly thrown together in anticipation of these grants. One is led by a former Georgia gubernatorial candidate who lost twice and has failed upward through the Democrat party system, leveraging the notoriety of her defeats into leading positions at “green” (anti-hydrocarbon energy) organizations.
Authorized by the IRA legislation or not, taxpayers floating a $1.8 trillion annual budget deficit in a country with $36 trillion in debt are reasonable to question how 8 nonprofits with combined annual revenues of barely $50 million came to be in control of $20 billion of their money, and for exactly what purpose. The table below shows the annual revenues and net assets of the eight eNGOs at issue, with the amount each recipient received from EPA under each program:
Two of these organizations exemplify the nature of the green threads on which Zeldin is pulling. One relates to the too cozy relationship between the State of California and the federal government acting as an accessory to the state’s “climate change”-driven murder of the nation’s vehicle fleet. The other has to do with that upward failing former Georgia gubernatorial candidate.
Climate United Fund (CUF) is deploying $250 million from EPAs National Clean Investment Fund to finance the purchase of up to 500 Class 8 battery-electric drayage trucks to lease at below market rates to small fleets and independent operators.
The manufacturers competing include Freightliner, Volvo, Electric, Kenworth, Peterbilt, Tesla, and Chinese EV company BYD. The first trucks are destined for the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. How did it come to be that these specific ports are first in line?
Seemingly more concerned with “climate change” than moving goods through the state’s ports, in April 2023, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) issued two rules. The first, titled the In-Use Locomotive Regulation, is a de facto future ban on diesel burning locomotives. The second was a new regulation dealing with short haul trucks used to move containers around ports known as “drayage” trucks. These are the on-road trucks that transport containers and bulk goods to and from seaports and intermodal railyards.
These regulations require a special waiver under the Clean Air Act (CAA) from EPA. In November 2023, CARB applied for the waivers.
CARB’s Advanced Clean Fleets (ACF) Regulation would end the use of all internal combustion engine drayage trucks transporting goods to California intermodal seaports and railyards by 2035. For reference, according to CARB’s website at year end 2022 (emphasis added):
“there were over 140,000 drayage trucks with 2010 or newer model year engines registered in the CARB drayage truck registry.
Approximately 33,500 drayage trucks service California's seaports and railyards annually, of which approximately 28,700 are trucks that visit California's seaports and intermodal railyards an average of 2 or more times per week or 112 times per year.”
A simple AI search shows reasonably equipped Class 8 diesel drayage trucks cost about $180,000 new. AI also quickly finds the average prices for each of the “zero-emission” electric drayage truck models listed in the Climate United Fund project, and we have listed those below for comparison:
Freightliner eCascadia: $450,000
Volvo VNR Electric: $375,000
Kenworth T680E: $425,000
Peterbilt Model 579EV: $425,000
Tesla Semi: $165,000 (other sources indicate pricing up to $250,000 or more)
BYD 8TT: $350,000
The timing of CUF’s creation seems hardly coincidental: It was established in mid-2023, around the time of the CARB In-Use Locomotive Regulation and its Advanced Clean Fleets drayage truck regulation.
CUF received its IRA grant in April 2024. The law required the funds to be obligated by September 30, 2024, and indeed they were.
None of this is to suggest that anything illegal has occurred. The question is not so much whether it is legal as whether it is wasteful and abusive to the American taxpayer.
Even if legal, it has the appearance of the federal and state governments, the Executive Branch, and Congressional Democrats in a not-so-virtuous self-reinforcing waste and abuse loop pretending to be justifiable under a green pretense. It goes something like this:
First, Congress passes the IRA with exactly no votes from Republicans in either the House or Senate, making it through the latter solely because the 2024 Democrat Presidential candidate – then Vice President Kamala Harris – cast the tie-breaking vote. That tie would not have occurred but for the fact Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) was kept “on side” with promises about energy permitting reform his Democrat colleagues quickly proved they had no intention of making good.
President Biden signs the IRA into law. Under his administration, EPA readies an avalanche of grants, loans, and subsidies for nonreliable energy, electric vehicles, “environmental justice,” “sustainability” and other green priorities as part of the $369 billion funding for “climate change” in the Green New Deal IRA.
Eight months after the IRA passes, CARB issues its In-Use Locomotive Regulation and the Advanced Clean Fleets drayage truck rules, which Governor Newsom happily signs. California then applies for EPA waivers under the Clean Air Act.
The IRA funds at issue are to be used to make “investments” through contracts with eNGO “partners.” Seeing this, new eNGOs are hurriedly created to be conduits for the authorized funds, and existing eNGOs also get into the game.
One of the newly created eNGOs applies for and receives a $7 billion grant. It uses $250 million of taxpayer money to purchase electric drayage trucks specifically destined for California ports, at a cost of one and a half to almost three times the cost of diesel trucks, bragging on its website that it is “the largest single order in U.S. history – to provide affordable, accessible leasing options to small trucking businesses.”
For obvious economic, functional utility, and other purposes, this is a taxpayer-funded money-losing enterprise, or the private sector would have already done it. $250 million for 500 trucks works out to $500,000 per unit. So, either CUF is overpaying for the trucks with taxpayer money, or it is selling or leasing them at a loss funded by taxpayers. It may well be all perfectly “legal” because the funds are authorized under the passed-by-the-grace-of- Kamala IRA, but it is ignorant, if not malevolent, nonetheless.
The eNGO that has drawn more widespread attention since Zeldin began his reclamation effort is the one connected to the twice defeated former Georgia gubernatorial candidate who failed upward so spectacularly that Governor Brian Kemp will never match it despite beating her twice and successfully running America’s 8th most populous state for two terms. In retrospect, back-to-back defeats in the Georgia governor’s race might have been the best thing that ever happened to Stacey Abrams.
Abrams lost the second governor’s race to Kemp in November 2022. In March 2023, she joined Rewiring America as Senior Counsel. The eNGO bills itself as the “the leading nonprofit working to electrify our communities.” This is code for working to take away your choice to use gas stoves, gas furnaces, gas water heaters and anything else using that remarkable, clean, abundant, reliable, affordable, energy-dense fuel in your home.
In a since deleted October 2023 post on X, Abrams wrote that she was (emphasis added):
“thrilled to be part of @rewiringamerica and the Power Forward Communities coalition. This is how we expand access to clean energy—by prioritizing housing, equity and resilience. We are building a future where everyone, regardless of income or place, can thrive."
About eight months after it was incorporated (August 2023), EPA awarded Abrams-adjacent Power Forward Communities a $2 billion grant from the same National Clean Investment Fund under which Climate United Fund received its $7 billion grant. Power Forward Communities’ 2023 IRS Form 990 lists $100 in total net revenue and $100 in total net assets. Zeldin is investigating this award as well.
In its press release announcing the award, Power Forward Communities touts that the grant (emphasis ours):
“provides needed capital to transform the marketplace for heat pumps, heat pump water heaters, induction stoves, solar panels, home battery systems, EV chargers, and wiring and weatherization upgrades that support them.”
“Needed capital,” indeed. Like CARB’s cozy electric drayage truck scheme with EPA and Climate United Fund in California, but for the fact that government is paying for all this with printed money, no one in their right mind would engage in such economic and physics absurdities - not even under the faux altruistic pretense of saving the planet and humanity.
CUF’s drayage truck scheme in California and Power Forward Communities pushing the anti-natural gas agenda serve as a window into the opaque, organized waste ring that connects the federal government, state governments, Democrats in Congress, and the eNGO complex through “climate change” and legislation like the IRA. Now imagine similar schemes playing out across many states and eNGOs.
Seeing the IRA’s nearly bottomless well of taxpayer funded largesse, others pass states pass laws similar to CARBs in California, they and other eNGOs apply for similar grants. Lather, rinse, repeat, using $20 billion spread across 8 eNGOs, rush the authorized money out the door right before Trump takes office, and park the money with Citibank until the grant recipients can run their competitive bid simulacrums and draw and disburse it all under EPA’s “watchful” eye.
As if the near certainty that tens of billions of taxpayer gold have been given out to politically favored environmental NGOs, “Green Banks” and similar conduits of “climate” slush was not unseemly enough, it is now also clear that U.S. taxpayer’s silver coins have been spread around the world in similar fashion. DOGE’s investigation of USAID found more examples of taxpayer-funded green waste, only instead of wasting your money inside your own country, the good folks at USAID found creative ways to waste it in other countries.
Even people who don’t live in the energy, economic and environmental space see through it. Our favorite reactions from non-experts came from two Substack accounts well known to most readers. The first came from Matt Taibbi, who related this whole charade to what he witnessed firsthand in the Soviet Union:
I’m frequently asked if my past covering undisguised corruption in the Yeltsin and Putin governments prepared me for covering American politics. Usually I say yes before making a semi-abstract comparison, like noting mid-nineties subsidized privatizations for Yeltsin cronies had similarities to the Fed facilities set up to swallow up “toxic assets” of big Wall Street donors. In this case the comparison is exact, the only difference being the American version of the scheme is far bigger.
Hat tip to El Gato (Bad Cattitude) for the other great analogy, in which Kat Timpf likens the faux outrage over DOGE to a man caught cheating by the texts on his phone (link in caption below image):
Lee Zeldin is exposing all of this to sunlight, something that is long overdue. Democrats in the House and Senate and eNGOs will scream and try to use the court system to stop it.
Since announcing his gold bar reclamation effort, Zeldin has also terminated nine contracts related to DEI, environmental justice, and other similar purposes ($60 million) with DOGE’s assistance, cancelled an environmental justice grant ($50 million) to the Climate Justice Alliance (which says “climate justice travels through a Free Palestine”), and stopped EPA’s $500,000 annual subscriptions to Politico’s Energy & Environmental News. This is a developing story, and more will surely be coming out in the days and weeks ahead.
We close with two notes. First, what Zeldin’s reclamation project and DOGE’s forensics are uncovering about the funds administered by EPA at home and USAID overseas suggests to us a need to flush out cockroaches in a different, darker, and dirtier corner. The shadowy web between U.S. environmental non-profits and foreign interests needs some long overdue exposure to the same sunlight.
As we have previously written, China is fighting a Green Cold War of our own making. Russia has billions of reasons to try to use American and European eNGOs to hamper U.S. oil and gas production. Follow the money. DOGE it out.
Second, and most importantly, it should surprise no one that this wellspring of (call it what you want..) green misappropriation, waste, abuse, fraud, and/or crony eNGO EcoStatism sprang forth from legislation (the IRA) that exactly no one other than Democrats voted for in the House and Senate. But don’t expect much of this gold to be returned to taxpayers, unless Zeldin finds that the grants were inappropriately awarded.
It is also not realistic to suspect that Congress will easily or materially amend or repeal the IRA, as Republicans will not have enough votes to repeal it for the next two years. And with many Uniparty Republicans enjoying electric vehicle and other IRA green projects in their districts, it isn’t clear they would support such efforts.
Which is to say that the IRA is but a symptom of a deeper problem. The basis for virtually every “climate,” energy, and emissions rule and regulation emanating from EPA over the last 15 years is an agency determination that it is now time to “revisit.”
Overturning that EPA determination will not be fast. It will not be easy. But it would put a stake in the heart of the “climate change” zombie and the organized waste rings emanating from that ruling. That effort is the subject of our next post.
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It appears our Federal Bureaucracy has used these NGOs as conduits to transfer our tax dollars to their intended purpose, which makes one wonder:
1. Who was involved with these NGOs and how much of our tax dollars stuck to their hands? (Although NGOs are “non-profit,” they don’t work for free!)
2. Who made the decision about who would be the final recipient of our tax dollars and what it was to be used for? Was it the NGO? If so, were they vetted for conflicts of interest?
3. Who was accountable to make sure that our tax dollars were used for the intended purpose?
I’m sure the shit will hit the fan when DOGE begins to “follow the money” through the NGOs and finds out the names of the people involved with the NGOs and how much of our tax dollars ended up in their pockets!
Environmental says Hold my Beer after that 👊! A most useful use of solar power yet, let the sunshine disinfect it all🗽🇺🇸 Billions treated like hundred dollar bills and millions as if they’re mere coins….. truly astonishing and disgusting. Greatly appreciated this essay!