At least $67 million in federal funding for six Hawaii energy projects appears to have been pulled by the Trump administration over qualms about worthiness.
The U.S. Department of Energy announced Thursday that it was terminating 321 awards totaling $7.56 billion supporting 223 energy projects across much of the country after a review that began in January to examine merits of more than $15 billion worth of federal energy awards made during the
administration of President Joe Biden and approved by Congress.
Funding being severed now apparently includes a $39 million award to in part enhance energy resilience and reliability for Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam under a partnership between Ameresco Inc., the U.S. Navy and Hawaiian Electric.
The Pu‘uloa Microgrid and Backbone Project is designed to draw power from a planned renewable energy project called Pu‘uloa Energy in the event of a grid outage to supply the base and some civilian communities with electricity.
U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii) said in an interview that the cancellations are an outrageous attempt at political retribution that, if upheld, will cost people jobs, result in higher energy costs for Hawaii residents and forego improvements in national security and more independence from foreign fossil fuels.
“These are all well-thought-out, well-researched projects that align with what this country has always talked about in terms of reducing its energy dependence on fossil fuels, reducing costs for American taxpayers and national security,” she said.
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Other affected funding in Hawaii, according to a list Tokuda and other members of Congress have received, includes $18 million for two projects intended to improve resiliency and renewable energy capacity for Kauai’s electric grid operated by the customer-owned nonprofit Kaua‘i Island Utility Cooperative.
The bigger of the two Kauai projects was to receive $16 million with KIUC investing an equal sum to add battery storage and advanced grid forming inverters to two existing solar power plants.
One benefit of the project was to further the capability of KIUC’s grid to accommodate 100% use of renewable energy.
The other Kauai project was to receive nearly $2 million with matching funds from KIUC to add a grid-forming capability to an existing generator at the Port Allen power station to accommodate stable operation of high penetration distributed variable renewable generation.
“This novel use of grid-forming technology in a grid of this size will demonstrate a replicable solution for local, regional, and interregional grid enhancement and decarbonization,” the Hawaii State Energy Office said in an announcement when the two Energy
Department awards for KIUC were made in October 2023.
The two projects were proposed by HSEO in partnership with KIUC.
KIUC on Friday said it has so far spent about $1.3 million on the two projects, and that $550,000 of that amount was pending reimbursement.
HSEO has the option to appeal the federal funding withdrawal decision within 30 days, and if an appeal fails then KIUC said it would need to decide whether to abandon the projects or complete them with some source of replacement funding.
HSEO said it plans to
appeal.
“Congress previously passed these funds, and they were not materially a part of the current budget under review, so it is hard to characterize the project terminations as anything other than unilateral and independent actions by the Trump Administration to defund previously approved projects by Congress,” HSEO said in a statement.
It’s also possible for award recipients to sue the federal government to uphold the previously approved awards if appeals are denied.
The other Hawaii energy project awards on the list are:
>> $5 million granted in 2023 for local technology company Oceanit to further development of a system called HALO for clean hydrogen production.
>> $4 million granted in 2023 for the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute at the University of Hawaii to develop fuel cells using clean hydrogen.
>> $1 million for HSEO to assess how more county and state vehicle fleets can be shifted to zero-emission vehicles supported by charging infrastructure. HSEO was awarded $1 million for this $1.3 million project, and said it was notified of the funding reversal Thursday by the Energy Department.
The Energy Department said its rescinding of award funding represents a savings for American taxpayers, and that each affected project had undergone a thorough financial review that found the projects “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.”
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Thursday that the agency began reviewing past financial awards when Republican President Donald Trump took office in January, and that many awards were “rushed through” in the waning months of the Democratic Biden administration “with inadequate documentation by any reasonable business standard.”
“President Trump promised to protect taxpayer dollars and expand America’s supply of affordable, reliable, and secure energy,” Wright said in the department’s announcement. “Today’s cancellations deliver on that commitment. Rest assured, the Energy Department will continue reviewing awards to ensure that every dollar works for the American people.”
Of 321 terminated financial awards supporting 223 projects, 26% amounting to $3.1 billion were awarded between Election Day on Nov. 4 and Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, according to the department.
The department did not publish a public list of the canceled awards.
White House Budget Director Russell Vought on Wednesday posted on X that the funding cancellations were for projects in 16 states and part of a climate agenda scam by Democrats.
“Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled,” Vought announced.
The 16 states are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington. All but two, New Hampshire and Vermont, have Democratic governors.
Tokuda scoffed at the Trump administration’s justification for yanking the funding awards.
“That’s just shibai,” she said. “It’s an absolute outrage and sham for them to say that this money is not in line somehow with our priorities as a country. … This is not about a thorough review of what projects should continue to be funded. This is a political hit list.”
