Among the $7.56 billion in clean energy grants the U.S. Department of Energy said it plans to cancel are said to be $157.6 million in commitments tied to the North Coast.
Secretary Chris Wright announced Oct. 2 the termination of 321 financial awards for 223 projects in 16 states. Recipients were given 30 days to contest the action.
Seven of the grants are said to be connected to the North Coast, according to a list circulated by Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, but the Journal couldn’t confirm that all involve projects or recipients in the region.
The tally assigned five of the grants, totaling $140 million, to District 2 (Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael), running north from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border, including Marin, Mendocino, Humboldt, Del Norte and Trinity counties and the southern half of Sonoma County:
Redwood Coast Energy Authority: $87.6 million
West Biofuels LLC: $30 million
Sonoma Technology Inc. (two grants): $13 million
ReJoule Inc.: $10 million
Two grants, amounting to $17 million, were linked to District 2 (Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena), including all of Napa and Lake counties plus parts of Sonoma, Solano and Yolo counties:
Liberty Utilities (Calpeco Electric): $13 million
UC Davis: $4 million
Huffman in a statement called the cancellations “a political attack on Democrats” that impacted constituents in districts held by both parties.
The committee Democrats had noted that the cuts affected 108 districts held by Democrats and 28 by Republicans. Huffman and Thompson were among 162 Democrat representatives who signed a protest letter to Wright. But some Republican lawmakers also have been pushing back on these cuts because of the local economic impacts.
“Solar, wind, and batteries are already delivering affordable, homegrown power across America, yet Trump keeps peddling his ‘energy abundance’ con job. This is (Office of Management and Budget Director) Russ (Vought)’s sick, twisted Project 2025 playbook in action: sabotage the competition, punish anyone who won’t bend the knee, and let Big Oil write the checks while Americans foot the bill,” Huffman said in a statement.
Vought had posted on X that the nearly $8 billion in cancelled grants were part of “Green New Scam funding.”
Arguably, the disparity in where these Energy Department grants were cut could also reflect partisan priorities of the districts. The first plank on the GOP platform last year included “lifting restrictions on American Energy Production and terminating the Socialist Green New Deal.” And the legislative agenda Republican-led House Energy & Commerce Committee says it “will address climate change risks and spur the development and deployment of clean energy infrastructure without the ‘pie-in-the-sky’ mandates, regulations, and federal government spending dominating the climate and infrastructure plans of President Joe Biden and the Democrats.”
The largest confirmed North Coast grant on the cut list is $87.6 million from the National Energy Technology Laboratory to the Redwood Coast Energy Authority, the Eureka Times-Standard reported. It would help the Tribal Energy Resilience and Sovereignty (TERAS) project that seeks to build a series of microgrids along a 142-mile electrical distribution line in eastern Humboldt County considered to be one of the state’s least reliable. In addition to the authority, project stakeholders include the Hoopa Valley and Yurok tribes, Blue Lake Rancheria, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and the Schatz Energy Research Center at California Polytechnic University Humboldt.
Another confirmed North Coast grant recipient is Sonoma Technology. The 43-year-old Petaluma consulting firm provides analysis and technology for clients’ air quality, meteorological and environmental science projects across the country.
The company had been awarded nearly $10 million and almost $3 million from the National Energy Technology Laboratory to monitor methane emissions around underserved communities in the San Joaquin Valley and Denver-Julesburg oil and gas basins in southern California and Colorado, respectively.
Sonoma Technology, part of Boston-based Union Park Capital’s Spheros Environmental Group since September 2021, couldn’t be reached for comment.
ReJoule Energy, which repurposes electric vehicle batteries to store solar power for night use, is based in the Los Angeles suburb of Signal Hill. It received the $10 million, seven-year grant two years ago and planned to build three commercial-scale battery storage systems for affordable housing projects, according to the Signal Tribune. At the time of the 2023 article, the company was working on a system for a 131-unit complex in Petaluma.
The company couldn’t be reached about the grant cancellation.
The Appropriation Committee Democrats’ list of cancelled grants associated West Biofuels with Petaluma. The company started there in 2007, but in the past decade has relocated to Woodland, where it had built a biomass energy research center.
The $30 million grant from the Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations is for a power plant that would turn wood waste from forest fuel-reduction projects to power three communities (Burney, Mariposa and Mammoth Lakes) in the Sierra Nevada, where power outages from extreme weather are frequent, according to the company announcement. The $25.7 million plant was designed to produce up to 3 megawatts, enough for about 3,000 homes and was set to come on line this year, the company said.
West Biofuels didn’t respond to requests for comment.
CalPeco Electric is a subsidiary of Liberty Utilities and serves about 50,000 customers in the Lake Tahoe area. The $13 million grant would cover half its $26 million “Project Leapfrog” effort to upgrade meters for automated reading and other modern-grid capabilities.
UC Davis didn’t respond to requests for information by press time.
Jeff Quackenbush joined North Bay Business Journal in May 1999. He covers primarily wine, construction and real estate. Reach him at jeff@nbbj.news or 707-521-4256.