Rhode Island was awarded $49.33 million to expand rooftop, multifamily and community solar for low-income households before EPA terminated the Solar for All program in August 2025. A year later, the grant has not been restored and the litigation is unresolved.
The state's plan targeted low-income homeowners, renters and multifamily residents in 61 disadvantaged census tracts containing 97,892 households — people largely shut out of rooftop solar. Its cancellation halted a planned expansion of community solar and bill-reduction programs statewide.
Rhode Island spent the better part of two years designing a way to put solar panels on the roofs of people who could never afford them — low-income homeowners in aging houses that needed electrical work first, tenants in affordable housing developments, the tens of thousands of renters with no roof to call their own. The federal government had already obligated the money: $49,330,000, awarded to the state Office of Energy Resources on April 22, 2024. Then, on August 7, 2025, the Environmental Protection Agency terminated the program that funded it.
A year later, the money has not come back.
As of today, EPA still describes Solar for All as terminated, and no court has ordered Rhode Island's grant restored. What remains is litigation — three separate tracks of it, two still unresolved — and a state plan that never got out of the planning phase.
The program was one of three created by the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, a $7 billion national competition to build or expand residential solar programs for low-income and disadvantaged communities. EPA projected the investment would reach more than 900,000 households, generate more than $350 million in annual electric-bill savings, unlock more than four gigawatts of capacity and avoid 30 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent emissions over the life of the projects. Those were agency estimates, never outcomes.
Rhode Island's share was branded EASE — Rhode Island Equitable Access to Solar Energy — and it was considerably more ambitious than bolting panels onto houses. The Office of Energy Resources' public plan laid out seven financial-assistance programs: direct-ownership incentives for low-income homeowners, grants for roof and electrical upgrades that older homes need before a system can be installed, battery-storage incentives, a milestone-based grant program for energy-efficient multifamily affordable housing, community remote net metering, and financing for community solar on preferred sites. The "adders" could be stacked and applied to total project costs, which was the entire point — the barrier for most of these households was never the panel alone.
The community-solar piece mattered most for people who will never own a roof. OER said Solar for All money would support a statutory expansion of the state's community remote-net-metering pilot from 30 megawatts to 70 megawatts, and could deliver meaningful benefits to more than 4,500 additional customers through low-commitment subscriptions.
The scale of the need is in the state's own numbers. OER identified 61 of Rhode Island's 244 census tracts as disadvantaged under the federal Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool. Those tracts contain 97,892 households. Of those, 66,421 are renters.
How many would actually have been served depends on which state document is consulted. OER's page says the proposed programs could provide meaningful benefits to more than 8,500 households. Attorney General Peter Neronha's office, in an October 16, 2025 release announcing litigation, put the figure at approximately 5,225 low-income households, along with $48,477,353 in projected electric-bill reductions, 27.49 megawatts of energy and at least 100 green jobs. Both figures are projections attached to a proposal, not results. Neither office has reconciled them.
The legal fight turns on a single word in the statute. Section 60002 of Public Law 119-21, signed July 4, 2025, repealed Clean Air Act Section 134 and rescinded "the unobligated balances" made available under it. EPA read that as eliminating both its authority and its dedicated administrative funding, and its August 7 termination memorandum said the agency could no longer implement, oversee or monitor the grants. Administrator Lee Zeldin has called the program a "boondoggle."
Plaintiffs argue the money in question was not unobligated at all. EPA's own inspector general, in an audit published January 7, found that roughly $6.98 billion — 99.7% of Solar for All funding — had been obligated by July 2024, a full year before the law was signed. The Rhode Island-based plaintiffs contend Congress rescinded only what was left unspent on paper, and that EPA acted unlawfully in canceling grants already locked in, without weighing reliance interests or alternatives. Those are allegations, not findings.
What EPA did next is described in the record of the multistate case in Washington. The agency first blocked plaintiffs' access to their grant accounts, then reopened them with balances cut to 7% of the award amounts — money for allowable pretermination and closeout costs — deobligated the other 93%, and placed the accounts in liquidated status. That accounting was documented for the plaintiffs in that case.
Governor Dan McKee denounced the termination on August 12, 2025, describing a legally awarded $49.3 million grant meant to lower long-term energy costs, support solar jobs and broaden the state's energy portfolio, and vowing to pursue legal avenues. Neronha has since joined two suits — the multistate Administrative Procedure Act challenge in the Western District of Washington and a breach-of-contract case in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims filed October 15, 2025.
The most direct Rhode Island challenge came from the people the money was supposed to reach. On October 6, 2025, the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, the Rhode Island Center for Justice and Solar United Neighbors, among others, sued in the District of Rhode Island, represented in part by the Conservation Law Foundation. Both the AFL-CIO and the Center for Justice were listed by OER as coalition partners on the EASE plan itself — organizations that helped design the program then went to court over its cancellation.
The results so far are thin. In June, a Washington federal judge dismissed the states' case without prejudice for lack of jurisdiction — a procedural ruling, not a finding that EPA acted lawfully. The Court of Federal Claims case was still live at the most recent official update, with plaintiffs' motion for partial summary judgment filed May 7.
None of this ended low-income solar assistance in Rhode Island, and the state's attorney general is blunt that there is no government program handing out free panels. Rhode Island Commerce's Renewable Energy Fund still awards grants for small-scale solar, commercial projects and community renewables, covering up to 30% of installation costs. Net metering and Renewable Energy Growth still generate bill credits. The Department of Energy added Rhode Island in December 2024 to its Clean Energy Connector pilot, which is meant to make community-solar subscriptions easier to reach for households already enrolled in programs such as LIHEAP.
What none of those do is what EASE was built to do: pay for the new roof and the new panel and the upgraded electrical service on the same low-income house, in one stacked package, at a scale of tens of millions of dollars.
The state's coalition for that work included Rhode Island Housing, the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank, the Department of Environmental Management, the Department of Labor and Training and the Department of Health and Human Services. The award was announced on Earth Day two years ago. Whether any of it is recoverable now rests with a court in Washington, D.C.
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