Energy & Environment

Energy & Environment

The Big Story

More Energy Department funding faces chopping block

The Trump administration is eyeing major additional cuts to green energy projects beyond the billions of dollars in cuts it has already announced.

© Associated Press

A list that circulated in Washington this week and was reviewed by news outlets, including The Hill, detailed billions in additional projects whose funds could be on the chopping block. It comes on top of $7.6 billion in cuts announced this week and $3.7 billion announced earlier in the year.

While the Energy Department says no final decisions have been made on which additional projects to cut, Energy Secretary Chris Wright has said the department plans to cancel additional funding issued for green projects under the last administration.

"This is evaluations we’ve had ongoing and we release these periodically. We released some announcements a few months ago, we’ll have many more coming this fall,” Wright recently told CNN on the recently announced $7.6 billion in funding cancellations.

“As this fall goes on, you’ll see cancellations in red and blue states,” he added.

The $7.6 billion in funding cuts announced included billions under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for “hydrogen hubs” in California and the Pacific Northwest.

After that, a list obtained by The Hill details hundreds of additional projects whose “latest status” is listed as “terminate.”

While the list released last week includes cancellations of projects in primarily blue states, the new list contains additional and equivalent projects in red states.

The new list contains cancellations of billions of dollars in investment in hubs for carbon capture and hydrogen energy, not only in blue states but also in red ones. It also includes funding cancellations for red states themselves and utilities that operate there as well as grants for universities.

It was first reported on by Semafor, which reported that

© The Hill