It may be too late for Donald Trump to follow through on threats to repeal outgoing President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act — at least that appears to be the case for the $7 billion Solar For All Program.

Officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency say program funds have already been “obligated,” meaning the 60 initiatives are on track to begin implementation early next year. The program is geared at lowering utility bills for more than 900,000 low-income households over the next five years.

Solar for All offers solar power to households through grants, loans or a combination of funding depending on the state. It is aimed at low-income and disadvantaged communities and projected to save the average recipient $400 a year in utility costs.

While grantees and those within the solar power industry are cautiously optimistic about its future, there are still ways the Trump administration could undermine the Solar for All program.

“I think one of the things we are concerned about is will there be speed bumps from the incoming EPA (administration) effectively administering these dollars and making sure payments are made to recipients in a timely fashion,” said Ben Norris, vice president of regulatory affairs for the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). 

Norris said one thing the program has going for it is the estimated 200,000 jobs it is expected to create — something even conservative detractors can’t ignore. 

“The Trump administration wants to hear about that story,” Norris said. “Job creation is a story that we talk about with both sides of the aisle.”

This summer, the Biden administration announced 49 state-level awards totaling approximately $5.5 billion, six awards to tribal governments totaling more than $500 million, and five multistate awards totaling approximately $1 billion. A good portion of the funds are going to state agencies to administer.

In a lot of red states — where there’s been more pushback to solar — nonprofit organizations were selected to run the programs. 

Most of the state agencies and nonprofit recipients that Floodlight spoke with feel confident the change in administration won’t derail their plans to roll out Solar for All.

New Mexico’s Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department is using the $156 million it’s receiving to deploy rooftop solar systems on single-family homes as well as apartment buildings. It also plans to upgrade the grid infrastructure to help local utility companies seamlessly integrate solar power into the electric grid. 

Sidney Hill, a spokesman for the state’s energy department, said any repeal of the funds would mean cancelling New Mexico’s program. But he said officials there are not “overly concerned” because the money has already been appropriated by Congress.

“New Mexico’s Solar for All program will focus on rural and tribal communities first,” Hill said. “These are areas in which many residents have not been well positioned to take advantage of the solar tax credits because they lack the funds to pay for a solar system upfront.”

The Nevada Clean Energy Fund, a local nonprofit, is getting $156 million to provide financial assistance for solar projects on single-family homes, apartments and commercial buildings at no upfront cost to applicants through grants or loans. 

“Over the five-year performance period, the Nevada Solar for All program targets reducing energy costs for over 20,000 Nevada households and creating 900 solar jobs,” said Kirsten Stasio, chief executive officer for the Nevada Clean Energy Fund. “We have already begun implementing the award funds. Moreover, the need for these funds in our communities will persist through the change in administration.”

Stasio said communities there are experiencing high energy costs and lack of access to capital to invest in cost-effective clean energy measures.

The various qualifying stipulations for local solar programs can be found on grantees’ websites.

The EPA said Solar For All is expected to generate $350 million in annual savings on electric bills and reduce 30 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions over five years.

According to SEIA, approximately 7% of the U.S. power generation comes from solar energy. In 2014, it was just under 1%, the group said.

This year, solar power represented 64% of the new capacity added to the nation’s power grid, the association reports. Solar power — including large solar farms and rooftop solar — now produces enough electricity to power over 37 million homes, according to a recent SEIA report.

The report cautioned that it’s unclear what Trump and the GOP-run Congress would mean for the solar industry but said the Solar for All program could provide an “upside” to the industry.

Since the 2024 elections, Trump and his supporters have indicated they intend to rollback the climate-related funding in the IRA, especially dollars left unspent by the time he takes office in January.

But Ted Toon, an EPA senior advisor, said Solar For All doesn’t rely on annual agency appropriations from Congress. That would essentially protect it from the Republican wave taking over the White House and both chambers of Congress next year.

“Obligation means that the government and grant recipients have entered legal contracts known as award agreements, commitments that create a legal liability of the government for the award,” Tonn said in an email. “Once signed — and as long as the recipient complies with the award agreement — the obligated funds are committed to that purpose.”

Romany Webb, deputy director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said the Trump administration might lean hard into ensuring grantees follow the stipulations of those agreements to the letter, using any breach as a way to claw back funds.

Webb said the new administration might also try to redistribute unspent money from the IRA, refuse to allocate any additional dollars or close the pipeline of information available to the public on how to access the funds after Trump takes office.

But she added the withholding of IRA funds without congressional approval could violate federal appropriations law.

“The government efficiency push that President-elect Trump has said he plans to advance has a lot of cuts in the federal workforce, and so those sorts of things could have really significant consequences for IRA implementation,” including Solar for All, Webb said.

Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.