Energy Dept. cancels climate projects

The Energy Department‘s cancellation of more than 300 funding awards to projects in 16 states won by Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election slammed the brakes on efforts to reduce carbon emissions, air and water pollution, and strengthen electrical grids.

The elimination of nearly $8 billion in funding for more than 200 projects could result in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs that would have been created by the projects, and undercut the Trump administration’s own stated goals of boosting American manufacturing competitiveness, critics said.

The cuts were announced on Wednesday, the first day of the federal government shutdown. Earlier Wednesday, the Trump administration froze a whopping $18 billion in funding for two massive infrastructure projects in New York City — the home of Congress’s two top Democrats.

President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have blamed Democrats for the shutdown.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Thursday, referring to the Energy Department’s funding cancellations, said, “Instead of playing politics with the shutdown, President Trump should be working on bipartisan solutions to lower Americans’ costs and create jobs.”

“This goes beyond targeting blue states. It’s taking a wrecking ball to working families’ lives: putting construction workers out of a job and raising families’ electric bills for political gain,” Schumer said.

While some of the department’s cancellations first announced by Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought were new, others had been previously announced in May by the department.

Vought likewise trumpeted the funding freeze for a project to build a new rail tunnel connecting New Jersey to New York under the Hudson River, and to extend the Second Avenue subway in Manhattan, before the Department of Transportation formally announced the move.

A list circulated by the Energy Department on Capitol Hill on Thursday of all the cuts it was touting included some, but not all, of the May cuts. Cuts from May that affected projects in states that Trump won in the 2024 election were not included in the list, and none of the new cuts were in such states.

The rescinded awards had been issued by the Energy Department’s Offices of Clean Energy Demonstrations, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Grid Deployment, Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains, Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, and Fossil Energy.

“There would have been significant emissions reductions from these projected,” said Ian Wells, a senior advocate at the National Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group. “Not only greenhouse emissions, but things that would lead to green air and water,” Wells said.

Wells noted that another large funding grant, which was cancelled in May, was $500 million earmarked for the Lebec Net-Zero project in Lebec, California, which aimed to produce carbon-neutral cement.

A similar, smaller project in Holyoke, Massachusetts, had awarded $87 million to Sublime Systems to build low-carbon cement manufacturing, which would have created between 70 and 90 jobs, Wells said.

Those projects “seemed to be in line with the administration’s priorities” of reinvigorating American manufacturing and competing with overseas competitors, with the benefit of helping the environment, he said.

“It’s potentially a ‘win-win-win,’ and that is potentially now being thrown out,” Wells said.

The Energy Department did not release the details of the 223 projects affected by the funding termination.

But Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee compiled a list of affected projects and released it on Thursday afternoon.

“The termination of these critical energy projects will increase energy prices, eliminate jobs, and make the energy grid less reliable,” the group said.

The terminated funding included $1.2 billion for a hydrogen hub in California under the so-called ARCHES program — The Alliance for Renewable Clean Hydrogen Energy Systems.

“Today’s decision to withdraw federal funding for ARCHES ignores the critical benefits our projects will deliver – including 220,000 American jobs and stronger national energy security and resilience,” said ARCHES CEO Angelina Galiteva in a statement.

“The ARCHES Ecosystem and Marketplace will continue to advance in collaboration with state leaders and private sector innovators – building on our strong foundation to create a reliable, future-focused domestic hydrogen network for California and beyond.”  

Another $1.1 billion in grants for energy projects across Washington state, including the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub, were cancelled by…