You’d be forgiven for being overwhelmed by the overlapping lists of canceled Department of Energy awards circulating energy circles in Washington, D.C.
First, on October 2, DOE confirmed its plans to cancel 321 individual awards. The news came initially via a tweet from Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, posted on the first day of the ongoing federal government shutdown; it boasted of plans to cut nearly $8 billion in funding. The impacted companies were concentrated in Democrat-led states, according to a list of all terminated awards obtained by Latitude Media.
But less than a week later, on October 7, a second and much more expansive list turned up. This second list has 647 awards on it — including the vast majority of those on the Oct. 2 list — totaling nearly $24 billion. The origins of that second list, which is not on official DOE letterhead, has not yet been confirmed by the agency, but it appears to reflect further termination plans.
(The agency did not initially respond to a request for comment from Latitude Media; at the time of publication, it has not replied to several follow-up questions.)
This second list spans projects across six offices: Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, Clean Energy Demonstrations, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Fossil Energy (formerly Fossil Energy and Carbon Management), Grid Deployment, and Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains.
The Oct. 2 list appeared to target projects in blue states; though the impacted projects are in districts represented by 108 individual Democrats, and 28 Republicans. But the additional 351 projects span red and blue states alike, and include a wide range of types of projects.
In terms of the number of awards that DOE appears to plan to cancel, EERE is once again the most targeted, with 158 more awards on the chopping block. However, in terms of dollar value, OCED is bearing the brunt, accounting for $9 billion of the nearly $16 billion in additional terminations. MESC is second, at just over $4 billion.
There are 24 awards that appeared on the first list and not on the second: five under the Office of Fossil Energy and 19 under the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
Those awards are for the following organizations (with office included in award number):
- Electric Power Research Institute Inc. (FE0032223, Calif.)
- Colorado State University (FE0032229, Colo.)
- Institute of Gas Technology (FE0032298, Ill.)
- Rocky Mountain Institute (FE0032377, Colo.)
- Aera Federal LLC (FE0032383, Calif.)
- Energy Research and Development Authority, New York (EE0008390, N.Y.)
- Sunvapor, Inc. (EE0008993, Calif.)
- Portland General Electric Company (EE0009778, Ore.)
- The Regents of the University of Colorado (EE0010502, Colo.)
- GKN Hydrogen Corp. (EE0010748, Calif.)
- University of Maryland, College Park (EE0010861, Md.)
- Hearth Labs Solutions (EE0010899, N.Y.)
- University of Maryland, College Park (EE0010900, Md.)
- University of Maryland, College Park (EE0010904, Md.)
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (EE0010920, N.Y.)
- University of Rhode Island (EE0011077, R.I.)
- General Electric Company (EE0011100, N.Y.)
- Komatsu America Corp. (EE0011102, Il.)
- The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York (EE0011178, N.Y.)
- It’s Electric Incorporated (EE0011241, N.Y.)
- Rocky Mountain Institute (EE0011248, Colo.)
- Trustees of Boston University (EE0011330, Mass.)
- Washington State University (EE0011377, Wash.)
- Tandem PV, Inc. (EE0011422, Calif.)
The original spreadsheet appeared to be a scan of an internal DOE document, circulated to stakeholders in PDF form. Latitude Media has created a sortable, searchable version of the Oct. 7 spreadsheet.
Editor’s note: If you work or worked on any of the projects on this list and would like to speak about its potential cancellation, please get in touch with the editorial team at editors@latitudemedia.com. You can also reach reporter Maeve Allsup or editor Lisa Martine Jenkins on Signal, at @mallsup.1494 and @lmj.5709, respectively.
And if you spot any errors in the data in the table above, please get in touch at lisa@latitudemedia.com.
