Jacob Hannah, CEO of Coalfield Development: “It was a once-in-a-generation cash injection.”<\/span>Michael Swensen\/The Guardian<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n This story was originally published by<\/em> the<\/em> Guardian<\/a> and is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0<\/em>Climate Desk<\/a>\u00a0collaboration.<\/em><\/p>\n For a moment, <\/span>Jacob <\/span>Hannah saw an unprecedented opportunity to make Appalachia great again.<\/p>\n In 2022, the Biden administration earmarked billions of dollars to help revitalize and strengthen former coal communities. The objective was to lay down building blocks for the region to transition from extractive industries like coal and timber to a hub for solar and other advanced energy technologies, with a view to long-term economic, climate and social resilience.<\/p>\n But on his first day in office,\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0scrapped Biden\u2019s clean energy and environmental programs, which he lambasted as woke, anti-American, liberal hoaxes.<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew we were living in a historic moment, not just because of the amount of funding, but because the whole region mobilized to meet the moment,\u201d said Hannah, 33. \u201cIt was a once-in-a-generation cash injection designed to prioritize extraction-based communities as part of the energy transition, which for the first time in almost a century made Appalachia very competitive. So to have it all taken away is deeply damaging and demoralizing.\u201d<\/p>\n Hannah, a fifth-generation Appalachian with a bushy beard and signature wide-brimmed hat, has been crisscrossing the country on a mission to raise philanthropic capital to limit the economic damage caused by the Trump administration taking a chainsaw to Biden-era grants.<\/p>\n Hannah runs Coalfield Development, a nonprofit organization headquartered in Huntington, focused on rebuilding Southwest Virginia\u2019s economy and social fabric through workforce training, job creation, and revitalizing abandoned buildings and mines in some of the most forgotten corners of coal country.<\/p>\n Coalfield Development has trained more than 4,000 people\u2014including many formerly incarcerated and\/or in addiction recovery\u2014over the past 15 years in everything from solar installation to drywalling and first aid. Yet, historically, federal grants for community regeneration efforts in Appalachia have been mostly top-down, project-based and short-lived.<\/p>\n The 2022 cash injection came through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Biden\u2019s landmark climate and infrastructure legislation, and was designed to help revitalize and strengthen former coal communities over the long haul.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are not frivolous things: these are basic services.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n It was the largest investment in Appalachia since the 1960s\u2019 \u201cwar on poverty\u201d under Lyndon Johnson.<\/p>\n In response, Coalfield Development spearheaded a coalition of universities, unions, nonprofits, businesses, and local governments to create collective infrastructure and capacity, enabling coal-affected rural communities across the US access to more than $900 million of the historic IRA investment.<\/p>\n Rural communities in Appalachia were on the verge of breaking ground on projects when the grants were paused or terminated by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by the billionaire Trump donor Elon Musk. The wholesale cull included the $3 billion Environmental and Climate Justice Program created in the IRA to tackle the climate crisis and environmental harms at a local level.<\/p>\n A few grants have since been reinstated, but are subject to long delays\u2014in part because so many staff at federal agencies were forced out by DOGE. Many remain the subject of litigation. Every single grant Coalfield Development was helping coordinate has been affected in some way.<\/p>\n The cuts have deepened existing mistrust in government, known colloquially as Appalachian fatalism, yet many of those interviewed by the Guardian<\/em> blame Washington politics generally rather than Trump.<\/p>\n \u201cThis party has taken away that funding from Appalachia illegally: That\u2019s the stone-cold fact. But by the time those facts reach communities on the ground, it\u2019s just so muddy. I think some are asking questions about why training is being shut down and why they didn\u2019t get their SNAP [food assistance] benefits, but where they\u2019ll find the answers is the big issue,\u201d said Hannah.<\/p>\n Huntington, <\/span>the second largest city in\u00a0West Virginia<\/a>\u00a0with 45,000 residents, was perhaps a perfect place to build a coalition for the massive IRA investment across coal country. Located on the Ohio river, it was once a major transportation hub for the region\u2019s coalfields, but suffered major economic and social decline as the surrounding mines shut down\u2014and then became an epicenter of the opioid epidemic.<\/p>\n It sits at the heart of the Bible belt, which once voted loyally with Democrats but like many blue-collar regions is now part of the loyal MAGA base who believed Trump when he pledged to resuscitate coal country and put America first.<\/p>\n Trump has won big in West Virginia in the past three general elections, securing every county in 2024 with an average of 70 percent of the vote\u2014the highest percentage any party has won in the state\u2019s history. His vote share was even larger in rural counties including Clay and Wayne, which Huntington straddles.<\/p>\n The Guardian<\/em>\u2019s visit coincided with the Democrats drubbing the Republicans in several state elections\u2014including the governor\u2019s race in Virginia.<\/p>\n It was also five weeks into the government shutdown, just days after the Trump administration announced that millions of Americans would not receive food stamps and Tesla shareholders approved a trillion-dollar pay package for Musk.<\/p>\n The damage caused by Trump\u2019s dismantling of Biden-era programs was visible all around Coalfield Development\u2019s redbrick office, which is located in a former manufacturing hub between the rail tracks and the river.<\/p>\n Next door, a multimillion-dollar redevelopment of a sprawling industrial site known as the Black Diamond warehouse has stalled\u2014at first due to grant suspensions and more recently due to the federal shutdown slowing down payments. Coalfield Development is still waiting for close to $3 million in overdue reimbursements.<\/p>\n The warehouse, which once manufactured military planes, jeeps, and coal trains, is being repurposed as a hub for sustainable industries and training. But all six EPA grants for Reuse Corridor, a new social enterprise to salvage and repurpose mattresses, electronics, and other materials frequently dumped in the Ohio River, were cut, effectively killing the business and with it countless job opportunities.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Solar Holler, a solar developer and installation company with 105 employees across Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, and Virginia, signed up for a new office in the warehouse as the business had been growing 20 percent to 30 percent annually.<\/p>\n But tax incentives for residential solar, which accounted for 70 percent of the company\u2019s business, will be axed at the end of this year thanks to Trump\u2019s \u201cbig, beautiful\u201d budget. Commercial tax breaks will end in late 2027.<\/p>\n Solar Holler uses panels made in Georgia, yet Trump\u2019s tariffs and other trade restrictions have caused supply chain delays and pushed up raw material prices across the board, as well as almost doubling the cost of solar energy on the market. The company\u2019s forecast for 2026 is down from 30 percent to \u201croughly flat.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe massive increase in costs ends up being passed down to customers,\u201d said Dan Conant, founder and CEO of Solar Holler. \u201cThe IRA rollbacks are obviously disappointing but that said, no matter how hard you make it on the ground for people, solar is the cheapest form of power on the planet so it\u2019s going to happen one way or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Swensen_Guardian-6003.jpg\")
\n
![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Swensen_Guardian-1004325.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Swensen_Guardian-6226.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Swensen_Guardian-5581.jpg\")