‘It’s a beast’: landmark US climate law is too complex, environmental groups say

When President Joe Biden passed the Inflation Reduction Act a year ago, Adrien Salazar was skeptical.

The landmark climate bill includes $60bn for environmental justice investments – money he had fought for, as policy director for the leading US climate advocacy coalition Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJA).

But after much discussion, the grassroots group realized they did not have the resources to chase after IRA funding. It would have to hire new staff and develop a specific program to apply for grants to access those funds. The coalition is stretched thin as is: organizing local and state campaigns, leading community engagement, and planning youth programming. GGJA decided it would not apply to funding opportunities at all.

“It is not within our capacity to try to build a program that helps our members access federal funding. We just don’t have the capacity to do that,” Salazar said. Many employees lack the time or knowhow to take on grant opportunities.

“We’re a national organization. How can we imagine a small organization that’s doing neighborhood, grassrootslevel door-knocking to have the capacity to also navigate the federal bureaucracy?”

Indeed, many of the small, community-based organizations that would benefit from funding the most are facing hurdles to competing for these investments.

Together, their experiences tell a story that echoes other environmental justice experts’ concerns about the IRA – that the monumental spending package won’t assist the communities that need the money the most.

Last year, advocates speaking to the Guardian criticized the bill for its many concessions to the fossil fuel industry: “This new bill is genocide, there is no other way to put it,” said Siqiñiq Maupin, co-founder of the Indigenousled environmental justice group Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic. Salazar felt similarly: how could he trust the federal government to allocate those billions of dollars to communities of color when it still fails to protect them from polluters?

Now, a second major criticism has emerged: some groups simply don’t have the time or resources to navigate the complicated bureaucratic process of applying for funding.

A year after the law’s passing, various grant deadlines for funding have already come and gone, representing key opportunities many groups may have missed.

Applying for funding opportunities – which is no guarantee of success – requires local community groups that are often run by volunteers to prepare an enormous amount of documentation.

Lakiesha Lloyd, an organizer who lives and works in Charleston, West Virginia, is still educating herself on how the application process works. She sees the historic climate bill as a lifeline for her predominantly Black community on the West Side where concrete highways crisscross the neighborhood and poor air quality reigns.

“We’ve never seen this kind of investment toward climate in our nation’s history,” said Lloyd, who works as a climate justice organizer for the national veterans rights group, Common Defense.

Still, she has a lot to learn until she can tap in herself. Instead, she’s relying on a peer partner to help navigate the federal grant-making process.

Morgan King, a climate campaign coordinator in West Virginia who has worked with Lloyd, said applying for grants is often easier said than done.

“It’s not something that someone can just sit down alone and write within a several-hour time gap,” she said. “The grant application, especially for federal