The Department of Energy is pushing federal workers to voluntarily resign before it submits its “significant” reorganization plans to the White House next week.
Lou Hrkman, the Trump administration’s political appointee in charge of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, urged staff in an all-hands meeting Tuesday morning to consider taking the resignation opportunity before it expires Tuesday night, according to audio of the meeting obtained by NOTUS.
The effort is yet another sign that the Trump administration is prioritizing slashing staff over building teams around its stated policy goals. Trump has pledged an “all of the above” energy agenda, but sharp cuts to EERE could curb work commercializing and supporting many types of energy technologies, from renewables like wind and solar to biofuels and geothermal — a technology especially popular with DOE Secretary Chris Wright.
Trump has also promised to drive down electricity prices. EERE staff are responsible for programs that help state and local governments bring down the costs of electricity bills and weatherize buildings for cold winters, among other functions.
“DOE has initiated a department-wide planning for a significant reorganization. This will include EERE. This reorganization will affect every EERE office, and DOE will submit the plan to the White House on April 14th,” Hrkman said in the meeting.
As of Monday afternoon, before the all-hands meeting, roughly 1,400 DOE employees had taken a new deferred resignation offer, amounting to about 9% of the agency’s current total headcount, according to a person familiar with the numbers. DOE identified about 9,004 of its approximately 17,500 positions as essential in an internal planning document reviewed by NOTUS. EERE was not one of the offices listed as an “essential” organization in this document.
DOE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
One staffer at EERE warned that some departments are already running the risk of not being able to do meaningful work. The office has just under $3.5 billion in congressionally appropriated funds for the 2024 fiscal year, including $452 million for advanced manufacturing energy efficiency, $493 million for state and community energy programs and $275 million for bioenergy technologies.
Bioenergy has many technologies in earlier stages of development that are far from commercialized. Those technologies are especially popular with Republicans, who see them as a way to promote new sources of income for farmers with U.S. natural resources.
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Anna Kramer is a reporter at NOTUS.