An April 1 report from the US Department of Energy Alumni Network, a non-partisan community organisation established in August by former DoE employees after federal staff cuts, shows that $14.7bn in federal funding and 659 awards to energy projects have been threatened or cancelled since January 2025.
The cuts followed the Unleashing American Energy executive order on the first day of President Donald Trump’s second term, shifting energy focus to fossil fuels and critical minerals. The order paused spending on the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act projects.
Despite lawsuits against the order’s funding pauses and a court order that agencies could exercise their own authority in halting funds, the DoE has continued to follow the directive.
The report further found the agency is “ghosting” awardees, as well as preventing dispute resolution, continuation applications and finalised awards. The partisan dysfunction threatens long-term energy security, the authors say.
The largest hits to energy projects include hydrogen and fuel cell projects, where $2.7bn in grants has been terminated and another $5bn threatened, and electricity grid projects, with $2.2bn eliminated and $1.1bn threatened.
The actions taken by the DoE, which in 2025 published a heavily disputed paper challenging the consensus that climate change is a threat to the world, have been ruled unconstitutional by a US district court judge in City of Saint Paul, Minnesota vs Wright in January.
According to the judge’s ruling, the DoE has violated the plaintiffs’ fifth amendment right to equal protection under the law on the grounds that the DoE intentionally terminated grants in states with greater numbers of Democratic voters.
Ghosted
The report says the DoE is not engaging with terminated and “threatened” — those placed on its target termination list — awardees and has been “opaque” about its process.
The developers of many terminated projects have suggested in their dispute appeals that fund cancellations did not follow due process as dictated by federal grants regulations, the report says.
Awardees who have begun dispute processes are largely not receiving responses, despite federal regulations requiring the department to issue a final determination. The department has not engaged with an estimated 90 per cent of awardees, terminated or threatened.
So far in 2025, the government has paid out only $967mn in de-obligations, — the process of breaking federal payment contracts — to threatened or terminated projects, representing only 4 per cent of total associated funding.
The authors say relatively few payments have been processed in 2026, regardless of status.
More than half of threatened projects have received no payments since October, signalling the department’s functional pause on all its targeted projects. The report suggests that frozen awardees may need to take legal action.
The DoE’s actions and lack of communication risks the deterioration of US energy innovation, as the public-private partnership model collapses, the authors say.
Some project developers have fully given up on engaging with the department, while others have begun considering moving their projects outside the US, the report says.
New research shows that some emerging economies are already pushing ahead of the US on electrification.
The full report can be read here.