Funding for carbon capture and storage projects at power plants will be scrapped, too. Calpine will not receive a pair of $270 million awards to retrofit power plants in Texas and California.
The list did not include some high-profile metals decarbonization projects, like the $575 million in grants set to flow to two Cleveland-Cliffs steel facilities in Pennsylvania and Ohio — the latter in Middletown, Vice President JD Vance’s hometown — or the $500 million for Century Aluminum to build a “green smelter,” likely in Kentucky.
What remains unclear is the extent to which Friday’s cancellations have disrupted ongoing construction, hiring of workers, or other unrecoverable commitments from companies impacted. Firms have been tight-lipped about plans to navigate the consequences of federal funding clawbacks. All of the awards required participating companies to invest at least as much as they were set to receive in federal grants.
“It is our hope to continue to partner with the DOE to show a success story of American innovation and ingenuity at its finest,” Sublime’s representative said in a Friday email. “Nevertheless, we have prepared for the possibility of this disappointing outcome and are evaluating various scenarios that leave our scale-up unimpeded.”
The projects are without a doubt now on far shakier financial footing, and advocates do not expect that they’ll be able to move forward without the federal funding. Should they fail, the effects would be profound, according to Evan Gillespie, a partner at advocacy group Industrious Labs.
“[The projects] would have helped catapult the U.S. into a leadership position in the technologies that will bring down emissions and pace the next generation of industrial evolution,” he said. “Killing these projects means more emissions, more pollution, and more people getting sick.”
“While the previous administration failed to conduct a thorough financial review before signing away billions of taxpayer dollars, the Trump administration is doing our due diligence to ensure we are utilizing taxpayer dollars to strengthen our national security, bolster affordable, reliable energy sources and advance projects that generate the highest possible return on investment,” he said.
Industrial decarbonization advocates pushed back.
“This program could have been a centerpiece of achieving the administration’s goal to bring manufacturing back to the United States,” Steven Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, said in a Friday statement. “Choosing to cancel these awards is shortsighted, and I think we’re going to look back at this moment with regret. Locking domestic plants into outdated technology is not a recipe for future competitiveness or bringing manufacturing jobs back to American communities.”
