The Environmental Protection Agency last month announced it was cutting a grant program that would have sent $156 million to Virginia to expand solar power. State officials spent the past year preparing the rollout of the program, called Solar for All.
Energy groups, academics and other representatives of an advisory council set up to help develop Virginia’s program are now pushing the state to fight back.
“Terminating the grant now would squander both federal and state investments while denying working families and small businesses the relief and opportunities these projects will deliver,” nearly a dozen members of the Solar for All Advisory Group wrote in a recent letter to Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Attorney General Jason Miyares and other state leaders.
Virginia’s Solar for All grant was one of 60 awarded last year totaling $7 billion, launched through President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said last month that the Big Beautiful Bill, recently passed by Congress, eliminates that funding mechanism.
“EPA no longer has the statutory authority to administer the program or the appropriated funds to keep this boondoggle alive,” Zeldin wrote in a social media post.
About half of Virginia households were expected to qualify for Solar For All, which sought to reduce energy bills by making solar power more affordable for low to moderate-income families.
Austin Counts, solar and electrification projects manager for the nonprofit Appalachian Voices in southwest Virginia, said the goal was to lower or eliminate the upfront costs of solar energy.
Though solar energy is cheap to produce, the upfront costs of installing panels can be prohibitive, ranging from about $15,000 to $30,000.
Tax credits that reward homeowners for going solar — now expiring at the end of this year — didn’t help the problem for lower-income homeowners who couldn’t front the money or didn’t have a large enough tax liability, Counts said.
“Solar for All was perhaps one of the solutions to overcome that barrier that's existed for the past 10 years,” he said. “Another way to help reduce the cost of systems for people who truly need it the most.”
Virginia planned to install panels for more than 15,000 individual homes, apartment buildings and multi-family housing units, and broaden access to community solar programs, which allow multiple people to subscribe to a shared solar facility.
In a press release announcing the award last year, Virginia touted the economic impact, expecting the local solar industry would add about 1,000 jobs.
Solar for All grants were set for a period of five years. When the EPA awarded them last year, recipients could choose to receive money and go directly into implementation, or take a year of planning followed by four years of implementation.
Virginia opted for the latter, which means it had not yet received most of the money, said Brandon Praileau, pastor of Wesley Union A.M.E. Zion Church in Norfolk and Virginia program director for nonprofit Solar United Neighbors.
“We did not have the programmatic infrastructure to be able to roll out this kind of money. So it was smart of us to do that,” said Praileau, a member of the Solar for All Advisory Group. “However, because we took the one-year planning period, there wasn't a lot of drawdown on that $156 million.”
The Virginia Department of Energy did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson previously told WHRO that all eligible costs incurred by the state during the planning phase are covered under the award’s initial terms, but did not specify the amount spent.
The state already solicited bids for a program administrator and was starting to conduct interviews before inking a contract, Praileau said.
Through community engagement work and interaction with his parishioners, Praileau said he sees people grappling with rising electricity prices.
“This takes money off the table that could have facilitated folks saving 20%, at minimum, on their energy cost every month,” he said. “Here is another example of the most marginalized folks being promised the help that they need only for, at the 11th hour, people to say, ‘never mind.’ And that's disheartening.”
Utilities are also struggling to produce enough energy to meet growing demand from data centers. Virginia imports more electricity than any other state in the U.S.
Adding rooftop solar is a key way to boost electricity and reduce stress on the system, Praileau said. Solar adopters can also earn credits on their bill for the excess energy they send to the grid through a process known as net metering. (Dominion Energy is asking the State Corporation Commission to reduce those credits.)
A representative for Gov. Youngkin’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
