In the introduction to Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint created by the Heritage Foundation, its authors note that their desired changes to the Department of Energy are significant — and potentially challenging.
The next Secretary of Energy will have “much work to do,” the authors note, including ending the “unprovoked war on fossil fuels,” restoring “energy independence,” and opposing “eyesore windmills.”
At just under 50 pages, the document’s chapter on DOE and related energy commissions is one of its longest and most comprehensive. It recommends everything from changing the agency’s name (to the “Department of Energy Security and Advanced Science”) to shutting down several of its offices and eliminating any “energy justice,” “Justice40,” and “DEI” initiatives.
During his campaign, President Trump disavowed the policy blueprint, even saying during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris that he didn’t plan to read it. (At the time, polling suggested that Project 2025 was highly unpopular with voters.) Since taking office, however, he has filled his cabinet with people with ties to the project, including appointing Russ Vought, one of its main authors, as head of the influential Office of Management and Budget.
Various online databases — compiled by universities, law firms, and advocacy organizations — have been tracking the second Trump administration’s efforts to unwind climate and clean energy initiatives. One community-driven initiative that is tracking the implementation of Project 2025 specifically, identified 19 recommendations for DOE in particular. Of those tracked objectives, nearly 70% are either already completed or are in progress at the agency.
Notably, not all of the completed recommendations were done via executive order.
Recommendations to shut down or scale back various DOE offices, for example, were largely enacted when the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency took a hacksaw to the federal workforce — shrinking the energy agency as a whole by more than 40%, and taking many offices down to a skeleton crew. Others, focusing on canceling awards and refocusing programs, are being enacted by DOE itself under the leadership of Secretary Chris Wright. And of course, Congress has played a significant role in enacting Project 2025’s energy vision, via the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
What follows is a non-comprehensive list of Project 2025’s recommendations for DOE, and how far they are from completion.
Completed Project 2025 recommendations
Repealing the Inflation Reduction Act
Recommendation: The next conservative administration should, among other things, “support” the repeal of Biden-era laws establishing new programs at DOE and “providing hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to renewable energy developers, their investors, and special interests.” The new administration should also support rescinding all unspent funds from those programs.
Implementation: The One Big Beautiful Bill, signed into law on July 4, significantly rolls back most of the clean energy tax credits enacted under the IRA. It also rescinds unobligated IRA funds from many programs, and in some cases, reallocates them to new priorities.
Restricting FERC’s consideration of greenhouse gas emissions in permitting decisions:
Recommendation: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission shouldn’t take into account upstream and downstream greenhouse gas emissions when approving natural gas pipelines — something the commission has been considering since 2021. Instead, Project 2025 says, FERC should limit its decisionmaking on natural gas pipeline certificates to “the question of whether there is a need for the natural gas.
Implementation: In late January, FERC issued a statement confirming it would not move forward with its draft policy to consider emissions in its decisions. The unanimous order brought an abrupt end to a controversial, multi-year proceeding, mere days after President Trump was sworn into office for the second time and appointed the Republican Mark Christie as FERC chairman.
Redirecting the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management:
Recommendation: Eliminate FECM altogether. If that’s not possible, the office, which was renamed from the Office of Fossil Energy in 2021, should be returned to its original name and mission: increasing energy security through fossil fuels. (In recent years, FECM has expanded its work on carbon removal and carbon capture and sequestration.)
Implementation: Included in a flurry of day-one executive orders, President Trump directed FECM to “resume consideration of pending applications to export American liquefied natural gas” to non-free trade agreement nations, which President Biden had paused in 2024.
“In Progress” Project 2025 recommendations
Canceling carbon management programs
Recommendation: Eliminate programs designed to support carbon capture technology, which remains “economically unviable.” Such programs should “be left to the private sector to develop.” If offices like FECM continue any CCUS work, it should be research that is “focused more on innovative utilization.”
Implementation so far: In late May, DOE announced it was withdrawing $3.7 billion in grants managed by the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, many funded by the Carbon Capture Demonstration Projects Program, which is a federal cost-share initiative funded by 2021’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
The canceled awards included $540 million for a pair of carbon capture plants being built by Calpine, and up to nearly $332 million for carbon capture at an ExxonMobil petrochemical facility in Texas.
Shutting down the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations
Recommendation: Eliminate OCED entirely, and shutter all of the agency’s “energy demonstration programs.” The document also asserts that OCED, which was set up in 2021 to manage funds allocated by the IRA and IIJA, is “distorting energy markets and shifting the risk of new technology development from the private sector to taxpayers.”
Implementation so far: OCED’s largest projects, including the direct air capture and hydrogen hubs, quickly landed on DOE’s project “hit list” this spring. While those projects have not yet publicly announced cancellations, they appear to be in limbo. In some cases, DOE has canceled previously scheduled community input meetings for hubs.
Meanwhile, OCED’s 250 person staff has been slashed to under 40 personnel, and entire program teams, including those managing the hydrogen hubs, have departed. Some OCED award recipients have been encouraged to voluntarily step back from their funding, and 24 awards issued by the office, totaling $3.7 billion, have already been canceled.
Shutting down the Grid Deployment Office
Recommendation: Eliminate GDO and assign any remaining activities to the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response. If GDO can’t be shut down, “most” of the office’s programs should be defunded, and it should no longer play any role in grid planning.
Implementation so far: At least half of GDO staff resigned during the DOGE-offered deferred resignation period. Those departures included career staff and nearly the entire leadership team, employees told Latitude Media at the time.
Ironically, staff were told that DOGE “really liked” the office’s Transmission Facilitation Program — a $2.5 billion initiative to help build out new interregional transmission lines. Project 2025, in the section about GDO, calls out that program in particular as one that should be eliminated.
Not started
Eliminating LPO
Recommendation: Sunset DOE’s loan authority through Congress and eventually eliminate the Loan Program Office. To the extent LPO can’t be eliminated and its programs can’t be repealed, a new administration should “strengthen due diligence and increase transparency” in its loans, and limit loans to projects that will “promote the reliability and resilience of the electric grid and other energy infrastructure.”
Current status: Despite ongoing chaos at LPO — including mass layoffs, multiple leadership changes, and several projects withdrawing from their agreements — the administration does not appear poised to shut down the office altogether. In fact, it has continued to disburse loan installments to existing projects. LPO has been weakened significantly, but it appears that the Trump administration plans to focus the office’s remaining loan authority on nuclear power and natural gas.
However, a significant portion of the office’s loan authority during the Biden administration was committed by the IRA. The OBBB repealed the IRA loan authority for LPO programs, meaning that while the office retains any already-committed authority, its future lending capacity has been severely hamstringed.
Eliminating ARPA-E
Recommendation: Eliminate ARPA-E, which is “unnecessary, risks taxpayer dollars, and interferes with risk-benefit decisions that should be made by the private sector.”
Current status: ARPA-E, established in 2007, is focused on funding research into high-risk, high impact technologies, as well as on getting those technologies to market. And the office has been given mixed signals by the current administration. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, speaking at the office’s annual event in March, applauded its work, and emphasized its potential to boost nuclear fission, fusion, and energy storage technologies. However, Project 2025’s call for its elimination is an ever-present threat.
The office continues to remain active, though. In late August, ARPA-E announced two new technology programs, totaling up to $60 million in funding, and focused on critical minerals and domestic magnet manufacturing. The office’s homepage continues to advertise for its 2026 summit, to be held in San Diego.
