The White House suggested that its almost $8 billion in funding cuts to clean energy grants last week were meant to put pressure on Democrat-led states amid the government shutdown.
But a closer look at the canceled funding reveals that the Trump administration also hit states that voted for Trump, and that the cuts undermine some of the administration’s energy-related priorities.
NOTUS reviewed a list of more than 300 grants that the Department of Energy announced it was terminating last week after Russ Vought, the Office of Management and Budget’s director, said in a social media post that the awards were “Green New Scam funding.”
Only a handful of those awards were clearly in red states, with the bulk of terminated grants appearing to target states that Trump lost in 2024 or states under Democratic leadership. But at least 15 grant cancellations worth more than $1 billion listed by DOE as happening in blue states were set to go partially or entirely toward projects like grid upgrades, carbon capture facilities and hydrogen hub components in states that Trump won.
“The grid is a highly interconnected system and programs that support energy abundance and reliability in one state have direct spillover effects in neighboring states, and have second order effects on the broader energy economy in the United States,” Zealan Hoover, a former senior adviser to the Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency administrator, told NOTUS.
He added that trying to contain the effects of those cuts to blue states “reveals a fairly flawed assumption about how the electric system functions.”
The Energy Department’s listing of the award terminations made no mention of those red state connections, but NOTUS’ review of grant information — much of which was scrubbed from the department’s site after the cancellation announcement — found the cuts were likely to have far-reaching economic consequences that go beyond the borders of the states that Vought and the Energy Department singled out.
That approach has evoked some concerns from lawmakers.
“We shouldn’t be targeting different areas in ways that would be viewed as punitive, that’s just not what we do,” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski told reporters on Friday. “If there is a rationale that the administration has for foreclosures or terminations of grants, present it out there but let’s not paint it blue and red. Let’s not further divide people politically.”
Some grant cancellations are undermining Trumpworld’s own arguments, including the administration’s announcement that it will reinvigorate the country’s coal industry.
Among the canceled projects was a $37 million grant to Urban Mining Industries, a concrete supplier with headquarters in a Democratic upstate New York district. An announcement from the company about that grant funding said it would go toward manufacturing plants for sustainable concrete in Maryland and Florida, and that those facilities would be focused on providing economic and health benefits to “former coal communities.”
None of the work funded by the grant itself was set to happen in New York, according to the announcement. In another announcement about the same facilities, Urban Mining Industries said the grant would help create “hundreds of construction jobs and 20 permanent roles” each at the Maryland and Florida plants.
Patrick Grasso, a principal at Urban Mining, told NOTUS he thinks his company was among those “painted with a very broad brush” because of its New York headquarters.
Grasso said he is unsure how the award termination will affect the outlook for the Florida and Maryland plants, but added in a statement that the company is “optimistic that a formal hearing with the new leadership at DOE will allow us to clearly demonstrate how our plan advances a more resilient and sustainable U.S. infrastructure while reinforcing the domestic supply chain for a critical building material.”
Louisiana’s leading role in carbon capture technology has spurred job creation, and Trump’s allies there have touted the industry as a burgeoning force in the state. But among the Energy Department’s terminations was a $10 million grant to CarbonCapture Inc., which the Energy Department listed as funding for California but was actually allocated for construction of a direct air capture hub in Louisiana — a project that CarbonCapture Inc. said would be focused on bolstering job creation in the northwest part of the state.
The company did not respond to a request for comment about how the grant termination affects its plans.
In a statement, DOE spokesperson Ben Dietderich told NOTUS that “the 321 awards terminated failed to meet the standards required to justify continued taxpayer investment and would have led to less reliable, more expensive energy” and that “the Energy Department continues to review other financial awards.”
Dietderich did not address the effects on red states.
The Energy Department also canceled 13 awards to the Institute of Gas Technology, now called GTI Energy, based in Illinois. GTI Energy was set to use at least some of its Biden-era grant funding for projects in red states and right-leaning regions, including Appalachia, the Southeast and Oklahoma. The company said in a January announcement about a recent round of grant funding that some of those projects would entail “community benefits and workforce readiness, particularly in disadvantaged areas.”
GTI Energy did not respond to a request for comment from NOTUS.
Few Republican lawmakers seem concerned about or aware of how grant terminations could reach beyond blue states, including to their own constituencies.
At least two of the terminated awards that were listed as occurring in a blue state would have gone toward grid improvements in North Dakota. When NOTUS asked Republican Sen. John Hoeven whether he was concerned about possible economic fallout in his state because of those terminations, Hoeven said, “not at this point.”
“I’ll have to look and see how they handle it, and obviously we may make adjustments. It’s going to take some time to start that,” Hoeven told NOTUS.
One of the largest grants terminated was for the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub, a multistate project that DOE listed as operating only in Washington state. But components of the hub would span multiple states, and St. Regis, Montana, was set to house a solar hydrogen hub as part of the project.
Project leaders in Montana were hopeful that it could stimulate a local economy that saw an uptick in unemployment rates after the closure of a local lumber mill. A spokesperson for the St. Regis Solar Hydrogen project did not respond to a request for comment from NOTUS.
Sen. Jim Risch, a Republican who represents Idaho, told NOTUS last week that he had not heard “anything” about how the grant terminations would reach his state and other red states.
Some companies based in blue states that had received grants under the Biden administration saw their awards terminated by the Trump administration earlier this year, but at least five found themselves on the DOE list again last week, suggesting the agency may be double-counting the awards it is canceling.
In response to a question from NOTUS about why some grants have appeared on more than one list of award terminations, Dietderich, the DOE spokesperson, said in an email that “those awards were evaluated with the same review process that Secretary Wright announced in May.” He added that “since they were notified previously, their repeal process may have already begun.”
Brimstone, a climate technology startup that develops cement without the carbon emissions produced in the traditional cement production process, was one of those companies. It lost a $189 million grant from the Energy Department in June, and the terminated award was listed on the department’s list of cancellations last week too.
The DOE said in last week’s list that the cancellation affected California, but the company was actually set to construct a new plant in Oklahoma with the funds, and just has headquarters in California. Following the June termination, Brimstone announced it is moving ahead with plans to open that plant by the end of the decade regardless of the status of its federal funding, Fast Company reported earlier this summer.
The outlook for other grant recipients, however, is less clear. In the face of growing energy demands, the cancellations have prompted outcry from Trump’s critics.
“We need these projects in red states and blue states,” Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich told reporters. “Their decisions to cancel projects, their decisions to sit on permits that are normally very straightforward and to politicize that permitting process … that’s what’s creating the energy emergency.”