Reports
Innovation on Hold: One Year Since DOE’s Mass Award Terminations
One year ago, on October 1, 2025, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) took an unprecedented step by terminating 321 awards worth over $8 billion in clean energy grant funding. DOE has since conceded that these awards were canceled "based solely" on the award recipient state’s political identity (targeting "blue states"). When combined with earlier rounds of cuts in clean energy demonstration projects, over $12.5 billion in Congressionally appropriated energy research, development, and deployment funding was terminated last year.
In April, the DOE Alumni Network released a report, Innovation Interrupted, that tracked a larger pattern of disruptions at play. Today, the DOE Alumni Network, in partnership with Lawyers for Good Government, released a new report tracking the lasting impacts to the Department’s grant mechanisms and awards management processes: Innovation on Hold: One Year Since DOE’s Mass Award Termination
This latest analysis of federal spending data, court filings, and direct awardee feedback shows that despite DOE’s statements that project portfolio reviews are complete, the majority of affected projects—whether terminated, "retained," or "ghosted"—remain functionally frozen.
INNOVATION INTERRUPTED: The Lasting Impact of Grant Terminations and Freezes at the U.S. Department of Energy
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Alumni Network issued its first official report, “INNOVATION INTERRUPTED: The Lasting Impact of Grant Terminations and Freezes at the U.S. Department of Energy.” The report details the events leading up to DOE’s announcement of the termination of 321 energy projects worth $7.5 billion in federal funding on October 1, 2025.
The report analyzes the six months following the first announcement and the larger context of DOE “ghosting” thousands of its awardees and the agency’s functional pause on financial assistance across a large portion of its energy RDD&D programs.