More than 3,500 staffers are preparing to leave the Energy Department in the coming days, gutting offices tasked with doling out billions of dollars tied to the climate and bipartisan infrastructure laws, according to career staffers granted anonymity to speak freely.
Roughly 77 percent of workers at the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, or OCED, took an offer to leave voluntarily, according to a person familiar with internal operations.
POLITICO’s E&E News previously reported that more than 3,200 DOE staffers opted to take the Trump administration’s offer for a deferred resignation, a figure that the agency has yet to confirm. DOE at the time said workers could resign now and get paid until the end of the fiscal year.
They’ve also been told to gird for possible “restructuring,” and deeper cuts are likely on the horizon as DOE complies with the administration’s push to shrink the federal footprint.
