By Peter Henderson
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 18 (Reuters) – California and a dozen other states are suing the federal government to force it to pay out grants approved by Congress for clean energy projects, the California attorney general’s office said on Wednesday.
The Trump administration terminated some funding allocated under environmentally focused laws, including the Inflation Reduction Act, reflecting a broad effort to check support for wind, solar and other fossil-free power sources while prioritizing increased U.S. oil production.
States, including California, have been among the main foils to various Trump administration policies, launching dozens of suits.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Tuesday told Reuters about plans to sue over changes in vaccine policy and a plan to challenge the rescission of a key Environmental Protection Agency finding, known as the endangerment finding, that was key to climate change regulation, for instance.
The new suit responds in part to California’s loss of $1.2 billion in federal funding for the Alliance for Renewable Clean Hydrogen Energy Systems, or ARCHES, Bonta said. The hydrogen plan was intended to replace fossil fuels in utilities, public transit, trucking and ports.
Federal agencies must execute laws, California said. “It’s as simple as Congress has the power of the purse, not the executive branch, and Congress already appropriated this funding,” Bonta said in an interview on Tuesday, ahead of the announcement.
Thirteen states in total are suing, among them Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Washington, the filing showed.
The U.S. Department of Energy, one of the named defendants, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Peter Henderson; Editing by Rod Nickel)
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