The Department of Energy is moving into a critical period that could determine how much it spends, which industries it supports and who drives its agenda for years.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright outlined a nine-point plan in February, but many details of the strategy have not been fully fleshed out. Among his priorities that could see more policy and spending proposals in coming months are a build-out of nuclear power, advancing liquefied natural gas and construction of data centers on federal land.
Here are three issues to watch as the Trump administration aims to execute its “energy dominance” agenda through the summer:
Budget and organization
President Donald Trump is planning to release a skinny budget proposal for fiscal 2026 Friday, followed by a deeper line-by-line proposal in coming weeks.
The document is expected to propose cutting $2.5 billion in DOE renewable energy programs, canceling $15 billion in funding from the infrastructure law for renewable energy technology and slashing nondefense discretionary spending by $163 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Other lingering questions at DOE: Will Trump seek to eliminate the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy — which supports early-stage technologies out of the reach of the private sector — and Loan Programs Office, as he did in his first term? Will he push for deeper spending cuts than he did in 2017 for the science and fossil offices? What will happen to the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations and the weatherization program?
“I’m hoping for a reorganization. … I really wanted that the first go around,” said Tom Pyle, president of the conservative think tank Institute for Energy Research and leader of Trump’s 2016 DOE transition team. Like many conservatives, he says he’d like to seea lot of the applied energy offices put under one umbrella and downsized, with DOE focused more on basic research and tasks such as overseeing the nuclear weapons arsenal.
Wright has said little about what might be in the budget request. But he has emphasized he’d like to see fewer regulations and more support for fossil fuels, nuclear and geothermal to help meet growing electricity demand because of artificial intelligence, among other things.
While the budget proposal has to go through Congress, many Democrats and environmentalists say they are concerned about what could make the cut this time, considering the differing politics from Trump’s first term and the influence of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has worked to slash government spending with the Department of Government Efficiency.
Gutting the department’s spending would not only cut jobs but crimp development of technologies viewed as critical to addressing climate change, they say.
Some groups are floating numbers on how a smaller DOE could hit jobs. The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES), an environmental think tank, released an analysis last month concluding that eliminating the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations could result in the loss of more than 291,000 jobs and hit economic activity in red states like Louisiana and Texas.
“At a time when the administration is rightfully focused on trying to revitalize the manufacturing sector … preserving DOE and the investments it is making should be atop the priority list,” said Brad Townsend, vice president for policy and outreach at C2ES, which is nonpartisan. Deep DOE budget cuts would hinder the United States’ ability to compete with technologies such as batteries, he said.
Wright has signaled that he supports some offices that Trump sought to eliminate in the past, including ARPA-E and the loan office.
“We are using the loan programs office … in situations where hyperscalers so want to see new electric and nuclear generation capacity,” Wright said at Semafor’s World Energy Summit last week. He has also indicated support for emerging technologies such as fusion.
Jigar Shah, who headed the loan office during the Biden administration, said at the BloombergNEF Summit in New York this week that it’s in Wright’s “best interest” to have a muscular DOE and loan office if he wants to advance Trump administration priorities such as nuclear and geothermal power.
Ultimately, the budget plan could signal how much influence Russell Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget, has over the president’s energy agenda. Vought was a backer of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which called for eliminating ARPA-E, the loan office, the renewable office and other DOE branches.
Staffing and appointments
As it awaits Trump’s budget proposal, DOE is undergoing an unprecedented transformation in its staffing levels, with more than 3,500 workers accepting an offer to leave voluntarily ahead of potential job cuts. Some offices, such as OCED and the grid office, were more affected than others. The departures are rippling across DOE, including at the National Nuclear Security Administration overseeing the nation’s nuclear weapons, according to two people familiar with internal operations.
Among those leaving are leaders such as Sunita Satyapal, the director of DOE’s hydrogen and fuel cell technologies office, who posted on LinkedIn last week that she had been at the department more than 20 years.
Former and current DOE staffers say the reductions are leading to increased workloads and could undermine the Trump administration’s agenda.
“The political leadership, when they really settle in on what they want to do with the department … I think they’re going to [ask], ‘What have we done here with all these staff cuts?’ It’s going to be really difficult for them to accomplish the policies that they want to move forward,” said one former DOE staffer who took the deferred resignation offer. DOE did not respond to request for comment.
In the past, Wright has said that DOE staffing needs to be pared back partly because employment levels grew under former President Joe Biden. “It would be downright irresponsible if we weren’t doing this,” he said last month.
Another issue to watch is the shuffle of its existing staff and the pace of filling open slots for political appointees. Pyle said DOE seems to be “focused like crazy on staffing, getting personnel.” There are several appointees awaiting action by Congress, including James Danly, Trump’s pick for deputy secretary; Ted Garrish, the choice for assistant secretary of nuclear energy; and Jonathan Brightbill as general counsel. Pyle said there are also “worker bee” political positions that have not been filled.
The administration also has yet to name some picks for leadership positions, including director of the Office of Science, which could be pivotal for Wright’s priorities on AI.
In the meantime, there’s been some turnover that could affect policy.
In April, Steven Winberg, who had been acting undersecretary for infrastructure, moved to a position as senior policy adviser to Wright. That prompted Michael Goff to move into the infrastructure role in an acting capacity.
This month, Winberg left DOE, according to his LinkedIn page.
This week, Ross Graber also resigned from DOE as chief information officer, according to a person granted anonymity to speak freely about internal operations. The chief information officer plays an important role at DOE by guiding the department’s cybersecurity strategy and information technology systems, including at the national labs and National Nuclear Security Administration overseeing nuclear weapons.
Graber, who had ties to Musk and formerly worked at Twitter before it became X, had joined the agency in March. His arrival came after Ryan Riedel, who worked for Musk’s SpaceX, left the position.
Efficiency rules
The coming months also could be pivotal for Trump and Wright’s plans for the efficiency standards program, one of their major targets. In early April, the department issued a request for information seeking comments on how to revamp the process rule, which sets the overall framework for regulations on appliances ranging from light bulbs to dishwashers.
The plan “will help us ensure that regulatory rulemakings for light bulbs, gas stoves, water heaters, and a host of other vital products prioritizes choice and affordability for the American consumer,” Lou Hrkman, principal deputy assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, said in a statement.
The move echoes Trump’s first term, when the president proposed changes to the process rule so it relied on industry-set test procedures and minimized the use of the department’s experts to set standards. Biden later overturned the language.
Wright called for a comprehensive review of the standards program in February. He has made numerous comments claiming that the program is burdensome for consumers, calling the rules “nonsensical” at CPAC earlier this year. On Friday, Wright is visiting Rinnai, a company that stands to benefit from rollbacks of standards for tankless gas water heaters. Trump also has taken actions such as an order in April to increase the water flow coming from showerheads.
The department is expected to issue a rule after public comments are submitted on the RFI by June 2. Environmentalists say that any changes to the process rule are unnecessary and a threat to a program they call critical for cutting costs and emissions. They also are warning about the prospect of DOE declining to enforce existing rules, which they say could set the stage for companies to sell fraudulent energy-wasting products.
“Canceling enforcement would hike energy costs for consumers and hurt domestic manufacturers and their employees. It’s a lose-lose proposition,” wrote Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, in a blog post Tuesday.
In the meantime, the administration has been targeting the program through other means. There have been multiple notices delaying the “effective dates” of several Biden-era rules that were never put into the code of regulations. Wright has indicated he’d like to see that strategy continue, angering greens.
In April, DOE also moved to delay the compliance date for a Biden rule setting efficiency levels for mobile homes.
In a notice in the Federal Register, DOE said it would move the date for multisection homes from this July to 180 days after yet-to-be-released enforcement procedures. For single-section homes, the compliance date would be moved to 60 days after the enforcement procedures. “This measure will allow the market to breathe easier as we consider the next step in our effort to remove burdensome manufactured housing regulations,” said Hrkman.
Lowell Ungar, head of the federal policy program at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, said it’s critical for higher efficiency standards for the homes to be implemented, considering standards have not been updated since the 1990s. As a result, owners of mobile homes — many who are low-income — are paying high energy bills, he said. The average multisection mobile home could save almost $500 annually under the Biden rule, according to ACEEE.
The rule is “important from an affordable housing standpoint,” he said.
