On Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Jackson joined 21 other states and the District of Columbia in suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for canceling the $7 billion Solar for All program.
Created in 2022 by the Inflation Reduction Act, the program was designed to provide funding to 60 grant recipients, with the goal of helping an estimated 900,000 low-income households across the country utilize solar power to reduce their energy costs.
Jackson said in a press release that the funds would have helped more than 12,000 households in North Carolina save an average of 20% on their utility bills and supported energy jobs.
“These funds were going to help low-income and rural North Carolinians save money on their energy bills,” he said. “Thousands of families were going to have the option to install solar power, save money, and have another energy option after a major storm. Now the EPA has illegally cancelled those funds — so I’m going to court to bring $150 million back to our state.”
In 2024, the EnergizeNC coalition, led by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ), applied for and was awarded a $156 million Solar for All grant from the EPA. According to Jackson’s press release, over five years, the program would have helped create at least 43 megawatts of solar energy and offered financial assistance to help low-income, single-family homes, multifamily housing, households with medical needs, and community solar pilot programs install rooftop solar.
The cancellation, Jackson said, left the state without more than $150 million of the $156 million it had been awarded, and the grants were “abruptly cancelled without a valid legal basis, and the attorneys general are suing to win back this money that is legally due to North Carolina and other states.”
On Aug. 7, the EPA canceled the program, which was included in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. Lee Zeldin, administrator for the EPA, discussed the cancellation, which resulted from the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
“In some cases, your tax dollars were diluted through up to FOUR pass-through entities, each taking their own cut off the top!” he said in a post on X. “The bottom line is this: EPA no longer has the statutory authority to administer the program or the appropriated funds to keep this boondoggle alive. Today, the Trump EPA is announcing that we are ending Solar for All for good, saving US taxpayers ANOTHER $7 BILLION!”
The One Big Beautiful Bill eliminated the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which included a $7 billion pot called “Solar for All”.
In some cases, your tax dollars were diluted through up to FOUR pass-through entities, each taking their own cut off the top!
The bottom line is… pic.twitter.com/TXS8IYhcoh
— Lee Zeldin (@epaleezeldin) August 7, 2025
NCDEQ Secretary Reid Wilson said in the release that the cancellation of the program would eliminate the installation of rooftop solar panels for more than 12,000 low-and medium-income families.
“Rooftop solar drives down utility bills, reduces air pollution, and creates jobs,” he said. “The program’s cancellation would hurt the electric grid’s ability to be resilient to future disasters, and would hamper North Carolina’s efforts to ensure reliable, clean, and affordable energy supplies to meet the needs of a rapidly growing population and rising energy demand.”
The funds, the release said, would also have helped households transition to more reliable sources of energy and prevent power outages caused by natural disasters, like Hurricane Helene.
Additionally, it stated that the Solar for All program was also designed to help create an additional 140 new local jobs, including those for contractors, construction workers, and maintenance staff. The solar energy industry employs over 9,000 North Carolinians and supports more than 200 businesses across the state.
Jon Sanders, director of the Center for Food, Power, and Life at the Jon Locke Foundation, told Carolina Journal that although Jackson’s statement that the Solar for All program would have saved low-income people and their families on their power bills and created jobs is true, there is no reason for the attorney general to think that the Solar for All program is the only, or even a good, way to lower power bills and create jobs.
“With respect to helping low-income families pay for getting solar panels installed on their houses, the program could do so only for those low-income families that have a house,” he told CJ. “Others in low-income apartments and multifamily housing would not be able to avail themselves of any putative benefits. Also, the jobs he is talking about would be contract installation jobs chasing subsidized work, not full-time jobs from an expanding economy.”
Sanders said the economic research literature is filled with studies demonstrating that faster job growth happens in economies with less regulation, lower tax burdens, and greater protection of individual rights against the government.
“I would welcome a North Carolina attorney general adopting those goals for his vision of the state,” he said.
Sanders added that, given that electricity is a vital expense for all households and an input cost for every business in the state, resource decisions that result in lower power bills would lead to a stronger economy and more job creation than otherwise.
“As shown by the North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC), power rates are about 20% higher in the eastern part of North Carolina than the western part, owing to the greater adoption of solar and less nuclear,” he told CJ. “The repeal in Senate Bill 266 of the interim emissions-reduction goal in the Carbon Plan is estimated by the NCUC Public Staff to save ratepayers $13 billion by choosing more natural gas and nuclear resources over solar and wind power.”
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