Reports indicate that the Department of Energy is eliminating a host of climate projects across the country in a cost-cutting move.
Altogether, say those reports, up to $23.8 billion in Energy Department funding is being yanked, impacting around 600 individual projects.
In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, Department of Energy spokesman Ben Dieterich remarked that the Department is in the process of conducting an “individualized and thorough review of financial awards made by the previous administration.”
Dietrich added that the Department was “hard at work to deliver on President Trump’s promise to restore affordable, reliable, and secure energy to the American people.”
The projects, notes the publication E&E News, include “five remaining federally funded hydrogen hubs and two direct air capture projects.”
The hydrogen hubs, which were authorized during the Biden administration, are in Minnesota, Montana, Wisconsin, and both North and South Dakota. California, meanwhile, would be hit the hardest, by cancelling 93 individual projects, worth $3.5 billion.
While some have argued that the Energy Department, under Trump’s directive, was canceling projects primarily in states that voted for Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris last year, the last reported round of cancellations would see the very red state of Texas losing upwards of 54 projects with a total dollar value of $2.4 billion.
Indiana, meanwhile, which has voted Republican in 14 of the last 15 presidential elections, may see the cancellation of one project worth $500 million.
During his 2024 campaign, Trump was critical of the climate projects in general and the hydrogen hubs in particular. Those hubs, designed to advance clean fuel production, were originally funded under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021.
Biden had said that the hydrogen hubs comprised the centerpiece of a national effort to achieve net zero carbon emissions by the year 2050.
In appraising the various reported cancellations, the Sierra Club said that the projects are “critical not only to the communities and jobs that they serve but are core to a robust supply chain to keep prices and emissions low for consumers and businesses.”
October 13, 2025
By Garry Boulard
Photo courtesy of Department of Energy
