New Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin’s termination of a reported $20 billion meant for clean energy projects has sparked lawsuits from large grant recipients. Funding for U.S. Virgin Islands solar projects had not been pulled as of Thursday but officials from Washington, D.C., to St. Croix said they were in the dark about how long it would last.
Less than a year ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency pledged $62.45 million to the territory for residential community solar and power storage projects.
Awarded through the Solar for All Grant Program, the funding is meant to allow the Virgin Islands Energy Office to develop long-lasting solar programs that enable low-income and disadvantaged communities to benefit from solar power and offset the territory’s precarious reliance on the Water and Power Authority’s reliance on fossil fuels.
V.I. Energy Office Deputy Director Mike Jaffurs said the territory’s grant-funded solar projects were continuing until there is a reason not to.
“We haven’t heard not to move forward with the solar for all project,” Jaffurs said, adding that the office has open communication lines with the EPA. “We do feel confident.”
In its application for the $62.45 million grant, the Energy Office said the funding could transform the USVI’s residential energy landscape, addressing high electricity costs while creating new opportunities for energy resilience and reliable, affordable, clean power for communities most in need. The grant was a big step up from a $2.6 million grant in April 2023 for similar purposes.
In April 2024, the Energy Office planned to build on its former Solar+ Financing Pilot and provide solar power for the most underserved residents, according to a statement from President Joe Biden’s EPA. President Donald Trump’s EPA, by contrast, called such equity efforts overtly discriminatory and ordered all the EPA’s Environmental Justice offices closed.
The Virgin Islands doesn’t have any Environmental Justice offices, an EPA spokesperson in New York said. There is a physical EPA office in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico and a presence in the Virgin Islands — although the EPA spokesperson said even the definition of the word “office” has come under scrutiny recently.
In a written statement Wednesday, Zeldin said prioritizing those hit hardest by inequity in environmental protection was discriminatory and labeled such efforts as opposite to Trump’s agenda.
“Some believe that so-called ‘environmental justice’ is warranted to assist communities that have been left behind. This idea sounds good in theory and receives bipartisan support. But in reality, ‘environmental justice’ has been used primarily as an excuse to fund left-wing activists instead of actually spending those dollars to directly remediate environmental issues for those communities,” Zeldin said.
Zeldin represented New York’s eastern Long Island in the House of Representatives before a failed gubernatorial bid in 2022. The League of Conservation Voters gave Zeldin a lifetime scorecard of just 14 percent. In 2022, the environmental activist group counted just one pro-environment vote from Zeldin — establishing national heritage areas. It was a low point on their scale, down from a 28 percent score in 2019 when he voted eight times for issues the group found pro-environment and 21 times against environmental efforts.
Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. had said he hoped a less active EPA might help the St. Croix oil refinery reopen after years of failed efforts and cleanups.
Bryan has championed reopening the refinery, saying the EPA “maliciously and illegally” shut down the plant after failed restart attempts spewed airborne plumes of oil and other contaminants onto people’s homes nearby.
A less-stringent EPA might help the refinery on St. Croix restart, he said, adding that there was “a lot of interest” in getting the refinery operating again.
Bryan and some members of the Public Finance Authority board of directors said in December that Zeldin, whom Trump said would promote swift deregulation, would offer welcome relief for St. Croix’s long-troubled oil refinery.
“Things should start to look a lot better for the refinery on the hill. But there’s still a lot of legal things to work on,” Bryan said. “You can’t say you’re going to turn on the refinery tomorrow.”
Zeldin’s statement this week seemed to meet Bryan’s exceptions.
“While accomplishing EPA’s core mission of protecting the environment, the agency is committed to fulfilling President Trump’s promise to unleash American energy, lower costs for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, restore the rule of law, and give power back to states to make their own decisions,” Zeldin said.
Zeldin has reportedly targeted a vast number of EPA projects for reconsideration, many of which include pollutants to air, soil, and water that could not be limited to one state or jurisdiction.
