The U.S. Department of Energy’s inspector general is moving to review the Trump administration’s cancellations of clean energy grant awards, a step taken amid allegations that the terminations were tied to where recipients lived politically.
Acting inspector general Sarah Nelson said the audit will focus on whether the DOE’s cancellations followed “established criteria,” according to a letter to members of Congress reported by The Associated Press.
The DOE watchdog’s review comes after a court filing in a lawsuit brought by clean energy groups and the city of St. Paul. In that filing, the government wrote that the selection of grants for cancellation “was influenced by whether a grantee’s address was located in a State that tends to elect … Democratic candidates in state and national elections (so-called “Blue States”).” The argument undercut the department’s earlier position that partisanship was not part of the decision-making.
DOE officials previously announced in October that 321 funding awards across 223 projects were terminated. The department said the canceled awards, after review, “did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs,” “were not economically viable,” and would not provide a “positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars,” AP reported.
At the time, White House budget director Russell Vought said awards would be cut in states that supported Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2024, according to AP. The department identified 16 “targeted states,” and the October announcement said they included California and other states that voted for Harris, though the individual details of each state’s political result were part of the broader dispute over how the DOE applied selection criteria.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright initially described the terminations as business decisions. AP reported that Wright said the cuts were “business decisions on whether it’s a good use of the taxpayer money or not.”
The congressional request that triggered additional scrutiny was led by Democratic senators Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla and Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, according to AP. In a late-October letter to Nelson, the lawmakers asked for a formal investigation, saying the cancellations “based on partisan criteria suggests significant unlawful bias,” and arguing that the grant funding came from the bipartisan infrastructure law passed under former President Joe Biden.
Schiff said in a statement he was pleased to see what he called “clear political targeting … intended to punish blue states,” AP reported.
AP also reported that the DOE cuts hit California the hardest and included more than $1 billion for a hydrogen hub there, as part of the broader clean energy grant terminations now subject to the inspector general’s review.
The DOE did not immediately respond to a request for comment, AP reported, as the watchdog prepares to audit the canceled funds and evaluate whether the DOE carried out the cancellations consistent with federal requirements and department policies.