An internal watchdog in the U.S. Department of Energy will investigate the Trump administration’s termination of $7.6 billion in grants for hundreds of clean energy projects across 16 states that voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
The move is especially welcome for Democrats who said that the cuts — part of broader attacks from President Donald Trump on climate programs and clean energy funding — would
slash projects boosting the electric grid, threaten thousands of manufacturing and construction jobs, and send Americans' energy costs soaring.
Sarah Nelson, assistant inspector general for the Energy Department's Office of Inspector General, said in a letter to members of Congress on Wednesday that the audit of the canceled funds will review "whether those cancellations were in accordance with established criteria.”
“This work will help ensure that these activities are conducted consistently with applicable laws, regulations, and Departmental policies and procedures,” Nelson added.
The Department of Energy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In October, the Energy Department announced that 321 funding awards across 223 projects were terminated, saying that after review, they “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.”
At the time, White House budget director Russell Vought said awards across California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state would be cut. All 16 targeted states supported Harris.
More than two dozen Democratic members of Congress from California, led by California Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla and Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, wrote a letter to the acting inspector general in late October requesting a formal investigation into the canceled funding, saying that the cuts “based on partisan criteria suggests significant unlawful bias.”
The letter said because the project funding came from the bipartisan infrastructure law, passed by Congress under former President Joe Biden, that the Department does not have the authority to terminate awards and that the decisions are "unlawful and will cause harm to Americans.”
Schiff said in a statement he was pleased to see the investigation into what he called “clear political targeting ... intended to punish blue states.”
The cuts, which hit California the hardest, include more than $1 billion for a hydrogen hub there.
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Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate reporter. Follow her on X: @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ast.john@ap.org.
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