Trump’s proposed budget cancels billions of dollars in energy infrastructure
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The deferred resignation programme started at the US Department of Energy (DOE) last week, cutting billions of dollars in infrastructure investments, environmental programmes, research grants, and renewable energy projects.
Sources told Factor This that about half of the Solar Energy Technologies Office, or anyone with less than ten years of tenure, took the deal offered by the feds and left their posts.
They were getting out ahead of the storm.
President Donald Trump’s 2026 budget plan, unveiled in all its glory on Friday, guts the federal energy agency by billions of dollars, cancels a slew of renewable energy, direct air capture, and electric vehicle (EV) charging projects, and axes anything remotely associated with environmental justice.
The budget plan, which cuts domestic spending for everything but national defense by $163 billion, seeks to slash discretionary spending by 7.6% next year, but includes a 13% increase in national security funding.
What is Getting Cut?
Trump’s plan cancels more than $15.2 billion in bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) funding, designated for renewable energy projects, carbon dioxide removal, and other cleantech.
In a document released by the White House, the Trump Administration calls the investments unreliable and costly, mocking renewable energy and EV initiatives and deeming them “scams.” Another $6 billion in IIJA funds designated for EV charging programmes and battery makers is also being pulled.
“The Biden Administration spent more than three years implementing these programmes, but built only a small number of chargers because it prioritised over-regulating and ‘climate justice’ goals. EV chargers should be built just like gas stations: with private sector resources disciplined by market forces,” the White House’s summary document reads in part.
The budget pulls US contributions to the Global Environment Facility and the Climate Investment Funds and eliminates $100 million in taxpayer contributions to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Environmental Justice initiative.
“The environmental justice programme gave taxpayer dollars to political cronies who exploited the programme’s racial preferencing policies to advance an anti-oil and gas crusade,” argues the White House. “The programme established an ‘Environmental Justice Concern’ policy to preference minorities because they are ‘especially vulnerable… to climate change because of their limited adaptive capacity.’”
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Trump’s plan also eliminates funding for “woke” EPA research grants to Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) that advance “a radical climate agenda.” Noncoincidentally, these programmes funded the National Resources Defense Council, an enemy to the oil and gas lobby that Trump openly courted throughout his candidacy. The NRDC helped shut down the Keystone XL pipeline.
The plan pulls $1.3 million from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) grants and research, claiming its educational programmes are radicalising students “against markets and to spread environmental alarmism.”
The DOE’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) programme stands to lose more than $2.5 billion from its budget for advancing “the destructive Green New Deal agenda.” The Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) will see its funding reduced to refocus on “reliable, domestic power, while eliminating funding for technologies favored by the globalist climate agenda.”
“EERE is also responsible for outlandish regulations that drive up costs for American families, like banning gas stoves and incandescent light bulbs. The Budget proposal refocuses spending on research and development, technologies improving baseload power, and bioenergy,” said the White House.
The budget kills another $80 million in renewable energy programmes at the Department of the Interior and eliminates conservation programmes at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). $408 million is being cut from the Office of Nuclear Energy’s budget, reducing federal support for “non-essential research on nuclear energy,” and another $270 million from the Office of Fossil Energy.
Originally published by Paul Gerke on Factor This.
