The Department of Energy announced on Wednesday that it was cancelling more than $7.5 billion in funding for clean-energy projects across the country, including in Colorado. The funds supported 223 projects, including hubs for hydrogen fuel, projects to cap methane emissions from wells, and upgrades to electrical grids.
Many of the awards came from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law or the Inflation Reduction Act, two Biden-era climate laws that funded billions of dollars in climate projects and research.
The cancellations affected at least 34 projects in Colorado, according to a project list obtained by CPR News. Those awards earmarked at least $608 million for the state, according to an analysis of cancelled awards by Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee.
Some of the grants listed for termination on Wednesday had previously been frozen by the Trump administration. Some of the funding for cancelled grants has also already been spent, according to records from USAspending.gov.
It’s also unclear whether the DOE has officially notified every project that their funding is slated for cancellation.
In a statement, Chris Wright, the secretary of the Department of Energy and a former Colorado fracking executive, said the projects “did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs,” and were not a good investment of taxpayer dollars.
“On day one, the Energy Department began the critical task of reviewing billions of dollars in financial awards, many rushed through in the final months of the Biden administration with inadequate documentation by any reasonable business standard,” Wright said.
But the cancellations come as the Trump administration has telegraphed its intent to punish Democrats and blue states during the shutdown. The majority of cancelled grants were to Democratic-led states like California, New York and Colorado, according to the project list.
“Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left's climate agenda is being cancelled,” wrote Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, on Wednesday on X.
Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet said he’s not surprised by the cancellations, which he sees as part of a pattern of Trump administration officials withholding approved funds for political gain.
“I'm certainly always concerned when we have a presidential administration that targets specific states for politics, but we're used to that unfortunately with the Trump administration,” Bennet said.
The Trump administration’s grant cancellations are likely to face legal challenges, given that many grantees have already signed contracts with the federal government. The DOE said that award recipients would have 30 days to appeal their terminations.
In Colorado, the list of cancelled grants include a $326 million award to Colorado State University to reduce planet-warming methane emissions and improve small-scale oil and gas operations. The award, announced in January, was one of the largest ever received by the university.
But that project’s contract had already been delayed in January, pending a review by the Trump administration, according to Dan Zimmerle, a project grantee and director of CSU’s Methane Emissions Technology Evaluation Center.
CSU, which has a total of seven grants on the list, did not immediately return a request for comment.
Two grants on the list provided $5 million to Colorado’s Energy Office to reduce energy use and make buildings more energy efficient. The office has not yet received official notice about whether its grants were terminated.
“This clearly politically motivated targeting of grants by the Administration will balloon energy costs, threaten grid reliability, increase pollution, and create instability in our business community,” the office said in a statement.
The terminated grant list also included a nearly $27 million award to Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, a rural power provider based in Westminster. That grant was to help optimize the rural electricity grid.
Mark Stutz, a spokesperson for Tri-State, said the group has not received any official communication from the DOE about whether their award was terminated.
“We continue to monitor as we wait for more information from DOE,” he said in an email.
Other projects were based in Colorado but would ultimately benefit other states. The list included a nearly $3 million award to BKV, a Denver-based energy company, which was studying how barges in the Gulf Coast could be used to transport carbon-dioxide captured from the atmosphere.
BKV could not immediately be reached for comment.
CPR’s Caitlyn Kim contributed reporting.
