The US Department of Energy announced this week the termination of 321 taxpayer-funded awards tied to 223 projects, saving American taxpayers an estimated $7.56 billion.
Following a months-long, project-by-project review, DOE officials concluded that the initiatives launched under the Biden Administration during his final days in office failed to advance national energy priorities, lacked economic viability, and offered no clear return on taxpayer investment.
Of the 321 canceled awards, 26% were issued in the narrow window between Election Day 2024 and Inauguration Day 2025. The vast majority of the awards were to 16 states that supported Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, including California, Washington, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Mexico, Hawaii, Connecticut, Delaware, and others. None of the grants were to Alaska, a Trump stronghold.
Those last-minute commitments, worth more than $3.1 billion, raised particular concern within the department.
The canceled awards spanned multiple DOE offices, including the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Grid Deployment, Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains, Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, and Fossil Energy.
Awards canceled include $1.2 billion for the ARCHES hydrogen hub in California.$1 billion for a Pacific Northwest hydrogen hub.$87 million for low-carbon cement manufacturing in Holyoke, Massachusetts (Sublime Systems project, expected to create 70-90 jobs).
“On day one, the Energy Department began the critical task of reviewing billions of dollars in financial awards, many rushed through in the final months of the Biden administration with inadequate documentation by any reasonable business standard,” said Energy Secretary John Wright in a statement. “President Trump promised to protect taxpayer dollars and expand America’s supply of affordable, reliable, and secure energy. Today’s cancellations deliver on that commitment.”
In May, Wright issued a memorandum titled Ensuring Responsibility for Financial Assistance, which established stricter review procedures for DOE financial awards. The new policy authorized program offices to request additional documentation from awardees and mandated individualized evaluations to identify waste, safeguard taxpayer funds, and ensure alignment with US energy and national security needs.
Using this framework, DOE determined that the 223 projects fell short of economic or security standards. Award recipients have 30 days to appeal the termination decisions, and department officials confirmed that some projects have already begun that process.
This rollback of these grants marks one of the Trump Administration’s most significant reversals of Biden-era climate investments under the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
One thought on “Dept. of Energy cancels $7.5 billion in Biden-era energy awards after review”
While titled “grants” these were in fact kickbacks to politically friendly organizations or people that supported the Obama/Biden/Harris Administration and would likely have been used more for political purposes than to generate any actual, usable energy.