President Donald Trump names just two programs in his executive order to halt Green New Deal funding — and both focus on electric vehicle charging.
The name check is casting a fog of uncertainty over the many companies, states and localities counting on $7.5 billion in federal funds to help build out their EV charging networks.
The president has little control over how that money is spent — it’s all either been allocated or set up by Congress to go automatically to states. But no one knows whether Trump, who tested the guardrails of presidential power in his first term and has promised to do so again, will take extraordinary measures to stop, as his executive order calls it, “ill-conceived government-imposed market distortions that favor EVs over other technologies.”
Previously, “there would have to be an act of God” for most of that money to be clawed back, said Loren McDonald, who analyzes federal EV charging investments for the data firm Paren.
