Enemies of Energy: GRID Alternatives

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Enemies of Energy, a research report created for the Capital Research Center. The page for the full report is here: Enemies of Energy.

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GRID Alternatives claims to be “the nation’s largest nonprofit installer of clean energy technologies.” What this means in practice can be understood from a pair of grants totaling $312.3 million approved for GRID in May of 2024 by the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The federal funding was meant to be used to provide solar panels for Americans living in LIDACs—bureaucratic babble speak that means “low-income and disadvantaged communities.” In total, at least $2.3 billion was approved for LIDAC solar panel grants by the EPA in 2024, and—true to their boast—GRID Alternatives was approved for the biggest chunk of this funding.^[i] [ii] [iii]

Alternative uses of the taxpayer’s wealth are a good way to assess program worthiness. Rather than spend $2.3 billion giving solar panels to low-income communities, the LIDAC money could have been used to purchase a $230,000 home for 10,000 of America’s most impoverished families.

But the LIDAC solar grants were funded through the Inflation Reduction Act, which was mostly repealed by the Trump administration and the Republican Congress. As of March 2026, USASpending.gov shows GRID Alternatives receiving just $4.5 million of the approved $312.3 million in LIDAC loot. ^[iv]

Still, USASpending shows that even the $4.5 million is almost $2 million more than the combined total of all federal grants sent to GRID Alternatives from all federal departments between 2008 and 2023. One example of a prior grant was $381,000 approved in 2021 by the Denali Commission so GRID Alternatives could work on “solar projects” for two remote villages in . . . Alaska. Perhaps not surprisingly, GRID managed to spend just $25,000, or 6.5 percent of what the Denali Commission had approved. [v] [vi]

Two years earlier in January 2019 GRID co-signed a group letter to the U.S. House of Representatives endorsing the Green New Deal, an eco-socialist plot for the American economy so radical that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) derided it as “the green dream, or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is.” In addition to the predictable denunciations of hydrocarbon fuels, the Green New Deal petition also denounced nuclear power as “dirty energy.” [vii]

PDF hyperlink to full report

A 501(c)(3) tax exempt nonprofit, GRID Alternatives reported total revenue of $46.9 million for 2024, and net assets of $34.9 million. [viii]

[i] Grid Alternatives. (EIN: 26-0043353) ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer. Accessed March 13, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/260043353

[ii] Project Grant #84085701 (Environmental Protection Agency). USASpending. Start Date: May 1, 2024. Accessed March 13, 2026. https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_84085701_6800/

Project Grant #84085801 (Environmental Protection Agency). USASpending. Start Date: May 1, 2024. Accessed March 13, 2024. https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_84085801_6800/

[iii] Braun, Ken. “Low-Quality Energy for the LIDACs and $21.8 Billion in Waste from the EPA.” Capital Research Center. January 16, 2025. Accessed March 13, 2026. https://capitalresearch.org/article/low-quality-energy-for-the-lidacs-and-21-8-billion-in-waste-from-the-epa/

[iv] Project Grant #84085701 (Environmental Protection Agency). USASpending. Start Date: May 1, 2024. Accessed March 13, 2026. https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_84085701_6800/

Project Grant #84085801 (Environmental Protection Agency). USASpending. Start Date: May 1, 2024. Accessed March 13, 2024. https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_84085801_6800/

[v] Federal grants for GRID Alternatives, all years, all sources. USASpending.gov. Accessed March 13, 2026. https://www.usaspending.gov/search?hash=9337d929df273fd3478684de64a65328

[vi] Cooperative Agreement #01643-00 (Denali Commission). USA Spending. Start Date March 1, 2021. Accessed March 13, 2026. https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_01643-00_513

[vii] “Group letter to Congress urging Green New Deal passage.” Earthworks. January 10, 2019. Accessed March 13, 2026. https://earthworks.org/resources/group-letter-to-congress-urging-green-new-deal-passage/

[viii] Grid Alternatives. (EIN: 26-0043353) ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer. Accessed March 13, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/260043353

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/enemies-of-energy-grid-alternatives/