Energy Secretary Chris Wright and the White House are in conflict over a push to slash up to $30 billion in federal Biden-era clean energy grants, six people familiar with the situation told POLITICO on Thursday — a debate whose outcome could spread the pain of President Donald Trump’s spending reductions to heavily GOP states.
Wright’s willingness to impose deep cuts on a wide array of projects this summer clashed with the White House’s desire to spare most grants so they could be used as bargaining chips with Congress and states, said one administration official with direct knowledge of the situation. But the White House has also pushed to cut some projects that Wright had wanted to save, said an industry representative who has worked with DOE.
“There are definitely annoyances with the White House about who gets to decide what gets cut and when it gets cut,” the administration official said. All six people were granted anonymity to discuss internal administration dynamics.
The White House referred questions to DOE, which did not comment on Wright’s relationship with other administration staff.
Some of the people disagreed on the exact source of the tension with Wright, a former Colorado-based fracking executive who has been aggressive this year in championing Trump’s pro-fossil-fuel agenda in foreign capitals. But the six agreed that the proposal to yank funding for hundreds of solar, wind, carbon capture, hydrogen and auto industry projects has been complicated by tense relationships among Wright, the White House and other political appointees at DOE headquarters.
Senior DOE staff were ready to release the list of targeted clean energy projects late in the summer but had not shared its contents with the White House, said a senior administration official who was granted anonymity because he had not been authorized to talk to the media. That annoyed the White House Office of Management and Budget, this person said.
The person said some of the conflicts stem from a clash of factions in Wright’s office, including people who joined the administration as part of Trump’s effort to cut spending through a newly formed Department of Government Oversight. That led to a “Colorado and DOGE crew” who had not previously worked in the federal government clashing with others who had served in the first Trump administration.
“The tension is between the people who worked in government before and this other team who worked in the private sector and don’t think they need to follow processes or rules and think they can turn things on their heads,” the person added.
Another person, who had direct knowledge of the discussions, said Wright was prepared at the end of the summer to ax all $30 billion in funding awards — only for the White House to ask the department to hold off so it could use some of the projects as leverage in other negotiations. Last week, White House budget director Russ Vought stunned the energy industry by announcing that the administration was eliminating nearly $8 billion of those grants — cuts that would almost entirely target Democratic-leaning states and congressional districts, according to a POLITICO analysis.
The fate of the remaining $22 billion in DOE-funded projects, most of which would benefit heavily Republican areas, is still up in the air. Energy industry advocates and GOP lawmakers expressed worry and confusion Tuesday after a full copy of the potential DOE “kill list” began circulating in the Capitol.
About 100 people in DOE have worked to identify which projects to eliminate, with a committee of about eight people combing through those candidates and voting on final decisions that were then presented to Wright, people familiar with the process said.
DOE press secretary Ben Dietderich did not answer questions about how the department had compiled the full list, who had worked on it or how much spending the department is considering for cuts.
“No determinations have been made other than what has been previously announced,” Dietderich said in an emailed statement. “As Secretary Wright made clear last week, the Department continues to conduct an individualized and thorough review of financial awards made by the previous administration.
“Rest assured, the Department is hard at work to deliver on President Trump’s promise to restore affordable, reliable, and secure energy to the American people,” he added.
An OMB official disputed the $30 billion topline number but noted that cuts to the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law played a huge role in negotiations this year for a spending deal to keep the government open. OMB constantly goes back and forth with agencies on budget decisions, added the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal processes.
Vought, not Wright, was the one who captured headlines last week by going on X to announced the $8 billion in DOE project cuts.
The department released the list of those cancellations a day later, showing that the vast majority were in states that voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in last year’s election. More cuts would be announced later, he said.
“Timing of announcements, I don’t control that always, but these decisions are made all in the Energy Department, all based on facts,” Wright said in an interview on CNN last week.
Wright has tried to be nuanced about which projects go on the list, knowing that ultimately he would be the person answering for the cuts, according to two of the people familiar with the process. He hired consulting firm Deloitte to conduct third-party reviews and financial analysis of the proposed cuts while they were being considered, people familiar with the process said.
But the White House and its allies in DOE headquarters intervened, forcing Wright’s hand in the timing of the announcements.
The tension between Wright and the White House is also playing out over the position of Preston Wells Griffith III, whom the Senate confirmed as DOE undersecretary in July, these people said. Two of the people said the department is looking next week to push out Griffith, a former energy consultant who worked in the first Trump administration at DOE and at the White House. Other people familiar with the situation said Griffith had a good relationship with Wright and was unlikely to be forced out of his position.
“It’s toxic af over there,” one person who works with senior DOE staff told POLITICO via a text message. “The boys are fighting.”
Griffith declined to comment.
The total scope of planned cuts is still liable to change as Republican lawmakers seek to protect projects in their states that were included in the broad kill list, said one person familiar with the process.
House Speaker Mike Johnson “didn’t even know a carbon capture project in his district was getting killed,” the person said, referring to a Louisiana project that was awarded funding under the Biden administration to capture greenhouse gas emissions and bury them underground.
Johnson expressed unfamiliarity with the full list of endangered projects when POLITICO’s E&E News asked him about it Wednesday. “I haven’t seen it yet,” he said, adding that he also hadn’t spoken to Wright about the status of the grant award.
Wright had already annoyed Trump by not using DOE’s emergency authority to keep a more than 60-year-old coal-fired power plant in Arizona open earlier this year, two of the people who spoke to POLITICO said. Wright had decided the plant was not profitable and would not be worth saving, these people said, putting him at odds with Trump, who has promised to revive the shrinking U.S. coal industry.
