Chicago and Illinois Remain Committed to Achieving Climate Goals Despite Threats to Federal Funding 

For years, Chicago has stood out for its commitment to climate change mitigation and emissions reduction. At the beginning of this year, it hit a milestone: All city-owned buildings are now 100 percent sourced by renewable energy, Mayor Brandon Johnson announced. 
In 2022, the city updated its Climate Action Plan with a goal of reducing the city’s carbon emissions 62 percent by 2040 from a 2017 baseline. But funding that would help Chicago meet those goals and pay for a number of other climate projects in the city came from former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, in the form of federal grants and tax credits. Illinois was awarded $430 million from the IRA’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grant program in 2024 to implement climate plans. 
Now, President Donald Trump’s flurry of executive orders targeting climate and energy initiatives threaten to cut IRA funding that has yet to be disbursed and could impact how Illinois and Chicago carry out future climate projects. 
Trump declared a national energy emergency to try to further increase production of fossil fuels on the same day—Jan. 20—that he withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement and ordered a halt to new permits for offshore wind projects. In a separate order, he said he was stopping the release of any unspent federal money for EV charging and canceling an “EV mandate,” even though no such mandate exists. 
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He also reversed a series of Biden orders that sought to make environmental justice—such as reducing the country’s serious pollution disparities by race and income—a key factor in federal policymaking.
In light of those orders, what will happen to unspent IRA funding and to funding that has been allocated but not delivered is unclear. Repealing the IRA would require a vote in Congress. A Trump administration directive mandating a review and pause in federal spending was ordered Monday. The following day, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and more than 20 other states sued, calling the funding pause unconstitutional, and the Office of Management and Budget rescinded its directive Wednesday even as the White House insisted that freezes called for in executive orders were still in effect. 
On Friday, a judge in the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island issued a temporary restraining order blocking the funding pause.
Environment and government observers expect climate funding to be especially vulnerable as the constitutionality of the orders is tested in court. 
Despite these threats, Illinois and Chicago will continue to fund projects and remain committed to reaching climate goals, according to multiple climate groups and city officials. 
“We have, for quite some time, been advancing the city’s climate goals without federal funding,” said Angela Tovar, commissioner at Chicago’s Department of Environment and the city’s chief sustainability officer.
Tovar