Nine EPA climate grants for Alaska projects ended with 99 percent of $151 million unspent

Nine federal climate grants worth about $151 million — most of it meant for Alaska tribes, tribal organizations and Native-serving nonprofits — ended last year with less than 1 percent of the money actually spent, federal spending records show.

The awards were supposed to fund some of the most basic infrastructure in rural Alaska: first-time piped water and septic systems, low-emissions homes, village solar, bulk fuel storage, riverbank protection. Instead, they were terminated. Across all nine, only about $1.2 million was ever paid out. Three of the awards — worth nearly $49 million combined — show nothing spent at all, including one $20 million grant for water and sewer work in Utqiaġvik that went not to a tribal entity but to the University of Virginia, and was terminated the same day it was signed.

The records show the same quiet pattern on each award: the original grant, then a modification dated May 2, 2025 — the last day costs could be incurred — that moved zero dollars. The money wasn't clawed back. It simply went unspent as the grants were cut off.

Among the Alaska recipients: Tanana Chiefs Conference held $20 million for Huslia, meant to bring piped water to two dozen households for the first time, along with new and weatherized homes and solar — and spent about $76,000 of it before it ended. The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium held roughly $20 million each for village solar across the Bering Strait region and for wind turbines at Kotzebue. Metlakatla held nearly $19.5 million for seaweed farming and a landfill closure. The Tebughna Foundation held $20 million for housing and workforce development at Tyonek.

The grants came from a program created under the Inflation Reduction Act; the EPA announced the selections in December 2024, then began sending termination notices in May 2025, and Congress rescinded the program's unspent money on July 4, 2025.

The terminations are being fought in court, with mixed results. A federal judge in one case refused to order the money restored, writing, "I cannot order the Government to reinstate contracts and pay money due on them." In a separate suit, another judge ruled the terminations "arbitrary and capricious and unlawful" and voided them in June 2026 — but the government appealed, and that case is still pending. As of last week, no Alaska award had moved.

One of the terminated grants shows what was at stake. The Native Village of Kipnuk received nearly $20 million in January 2025 to armor its riverbank — including removing fuel tanks and hazardous materials at risk of falling into the Kugkaktlik River — and spent about $480,000 before the grant ended nine weeks later. Then, that fall, the remnants of Typhoon Halong tore through western Alaska. Federal data records 153 homes destroyed in Kipnuk. "Kipnuk was probably the most impacted community by this storm," a state transportation official told a Senate committee. The records establish that sequence, not that one caused the other.

The pattern wasn't unique to Alaska. Of 103 such awards nationwide, worth more than $1.5 billion, the vast majority ended in the same few days at the start of May 2025. Neither the spending records nor the court files contain any EPA explanation for why the grants were cut.