The Department of Energy may be planning to cancel even more awards, according to a leaked document reviewed today by Latitude Media.
Last week, the agency confirmed its plans to cancel 321 individual awards, totalling $7.5 billion and spanning six offices across the agency. But a spreadsheet currently circulating in Washington, D.C. shows 351 additional projects that the Trump administration has earmarked for termination, totaling just under $16 billion in funding.
There’s significant overlap between the two lists: 297 of last week’s 321 cancelled awards are also named in the new spreadsheet. The new list’s 647 awards total nearly $24 billion. However, there are 24 awards, mostly under the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, that appear solely on the first list and not on the second.
Sources who spoke with Latitude Media said there’s ongoing confusion about the nature of this new list, and the status of the projects on it. Every project on the list has “terminate” in the “latest status” column. However, companies whose projects appear on the second list but not the first — such as those developing the biggest Direct Air Capture Hubs in the country — have told Latitude that they have not received official notice from the agency of a change in their project’s status, but were aware of the list.
DOE itself has not confirmed the list’s authenticity; the office did not respond to a request for comment from Latitude Media.
By the numbers
The new list greatly expands the impact across key offices — and the additional cuts target offices that got off fairly easy on the first list.
The Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains saw the most dramatic increase in cuts, from six awards to 45 awards, totaling nearly $4.3 billion. The cuts span major manufacturing companies like Honeywell and General Motors, as well as smaller companies building much-needed materials for the energy transition, such as the advanced conductor company TS Conductor.
The Grid Deployment Office was second-worst hit, at 45 awards totaling $3.3 billion, up from 25 awards on the initial list. Many of the recipients of these awards are either major utilities — such as Southern California Edison and Exelon — or state and local organizations like the Minnesota Department of Commerce. Several of these are located in red states, such as the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority and the State of Louisiana Department of Natural Resources.
Meanwhile, the Office of Fossil Energy (formerly Fossil Energy and Carbon Management) will now cancel more funding than the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy: 151 FE awards totaling $2.1 billion, versus 340 EERE awards totaling $1.8 billion.
The Advanced Energy Research Projects for Energy Office — which Energy Secretary Chris Wright applauded at the department’s conference earlier this year — had just a single project on the smaller cancellation list last week. The wider list includes five ARPA-E awards, totalling more than $46 million.
The list does not include awards managed by the Office of Science, the Nuclear Energy Office, or the Loan Programs Office.
OCED in DOE’s cross-hairs
In total funding terms, the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations was the hardest hit, with over $12 billion in awards on the chopping block.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law included $21 billion for the office over ten years. Around $12.3 billion worth of OCED awards are now on the cancellation list. Those include funding for some of the office’s largest projects, including the Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs, which were on the first list, and many of the Direct Air Capture Hubs, which appear only on the second.
In an official statement, the Carbon Removal Alliance and the Carbon Business Council acknowledged the cancellation of the two largest DAC Hub awards — Project Cypress in Louisiana, and the South Texas DAC Hub, operated by Occidental subsidiary 1PointFive — which follow a handful of smaller awards that appeared on last week’s cancellation list.
However, companies on the list don’t appear to have been given forewarning. Vikrum Aiyer, Head of Global Policy at Heirloom, which is involved in Project Cypress, told Latitude this morning that the company is “not aware” of a decision from DOE. Heirloom continues to “productively engage with the administration in a project review,” he added.
Climeworks confirmed that the list was circulating, but said it had also not received any official notice from DOE. 1PointFive didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Editor’s note: This story was updated on October 7. It was expanded significantly to include data analysis from Latitude Media and to add Lisa Martine Jenkins as an author; the “By the numbers” section was added, as were some contextual details about the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations.
