Lucio Vasquez / Houston Public Media

Congressional Democrats are pressing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to restore funding to a program expanding the deployment of solar energy for working families. The move follows Harris County’s lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s administration to restore the program.

The EPA announced on Aug. 7 that it would terminate the Solar for All program and take back $7 billion in funds from grant recipients, saying the Trump administration’s rescission package required it to do so. Houston Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher played a key role in passing the program into law three years ago.

“This is a huge, important renewable energy program, and here in Texas, Harris County led a statewide coalition that won one of the five largest awards of any group in the country,” Fletcher said. “It got a $250 million grant to deliver solar and battery storage to nearly 30,000 households in Texas.”

Fletcher stressed that the program was designed to create thousands of well-paying jobs and to boost American manufacturing, in addition to making the electrical grid more reliable.

“All of that was happening here in Texas, in Houston, in Port Arthur, and in Waco,” she said. “Training programs were already underway to certify Texans in solar installation and energy efficiency. So, we’re talking about benefits for consumers, benefits for workers, and benefits for our environment and our economy.”

Fletcher co-led 100 House Democrats in sending a letter to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin demanding he restore the program and reinstate the grant funding. Fletcher said Zeldin’s office has yet to respond.

“This letter is responding to something even bigger than the Solar for All program,” Fletcher said. “It’s about responding to the Trump administration’s continued efforts to consolidate power and overrule the other branches of government, and that would be Congress and the courts. What we see here is yet another example of the administration ignoring or rejecting the law that Congress has passed and programs that Congress has put into place for no reason or for reasons that they just don’t agree with it.”