The Trump administration has canceled nearly $4 billion in funds for industrial projects mostly planned for rural and conservative areas in states including Texas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Alabama and Ohio.
The Department of Energy withdrew more than $3.7 billion in funding for 24 projects, the agency announced on Friday. Aside from a handful of projects in California and New York, the companies that lost funding were mostly planning to invest in industrial and manufacturing facilities in areas of the country that voted for Trump, according to a NOTUS review of the cancellations. More than $2 billion in the canceled funds would have gone to conservative states.
The majority of the canceled funding was for projects intended to advance new technologies in heavy industry and in capturing carbon dioxide emissions and storing it, either underground or in usable products like cement.
The canceled contracts include more than $500 million for a carbon capture project planned for Baytown, Texas, in collaboration between Exxon-Mobil and the energy company Calpine. The agency also canceled $170 million for Kraft Heinz facilities to reduce emissions at several facilities across the country, as well as $500 million for a cement and asphalt supplier in Louisiana and $375 million for a chemical recycling plant in Longview, Texas.
“After a thorough and individualized financial review of each award, DOE found that these projects failed to advance the energy needs of the American people, were not economically viable and would not generate a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars,” an agency spokesperson wrote in the press release announcing the cancellations on Friday.
These contract cancellations are the first to be announced after the DOE said it was carefully reviewing a long list of projects awarded funds from the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill during the Biden administration. During budget hearings last week, Energy Secretary Chris Wright lambasted the Biden administration’s rush to get federal funding out the door before Trump took office.
The cancellation drew condemnation from the companies and industry groups affected.
“Above all, businesses require certainty to plan and execute projects, and carbon management is no different. For decades, the United States has been the global leader in the development and deployment of carbon management technologies but moves like this risk ceding America’s energy and technological leadership to other nations,” said Jessie Stolark, the executive director of the Carbon Capture Coalition. “As the policy framework in other nations for carbon management continues to mature, we risk being left behind.”
More than half of the projects with canceled funding were awarded between the election and Trump’s inauguration, the agency said in its statement.
Texas and California lost funding for three major projects, while Alabama, Kentucky, and Ohio all lost funding for two.
The list of canceled projects also includes awards to start-ups popular with Silicon Valley venture capital — Brimstone Energy and Sublime Systems, both of which were attempting to transform how cement is made.
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Anna Kramer is a reporter at NOTUS.