In Wisconsin, utility Alliant Power has referred to as off a undertaking meant to cut back energy outages in deprived and tribal communities, after the Trump administration terminated a federal grant that might have supported it.
In California, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, which has deployed and upgraded lots of of hundreds of superior sensible meters, has not obtained any reimbursement from the U.S. Division of Power, or DOE, for the work since October, when the Trump administration declared it was killing grants that it described as fueling “the Left’s local weather agenda.”
And within the higher Midwest, a consortium of regional grid operators, utilities, and state companies continues to be ready for $464 million in DOE funds meant to assist construct high-voltage transmission strains to cut back grid congestion — though the company accountable for the undertaking says the funding will quickly be restored.
Throughout the nation, lots of of such tasks to enhance grid reliability and make electrical energy extra inexpensive face a extremely unsure future — the results of Trump administration actions which have slowed the outflow of billions of {dollars} of DOE funds to a trickle.
A few of these tasks in “blue states” have been focused as political retribution, as current reporting from The New York Instances has made clear. A handful of grant awardees on this class have received favorable courtroom rulings, and extra are searching for authorized redress.
However many others are affected by the DOE’s broader failure to hold out work that Congress has tasked it to do, in line with teams which have been monitoring the company for the reason that begin of final yr. In purple and blue states alike, the DOE is forcing hundreds of grantees to endure a laborious evaluation course of, so even tasks that haven’t been formally terminated are caught, unable to find out when or in the event that they’ll begin getting the cash they’re owed.
In line with an April report from the DOE Alumni Community, a group of former company workers, the DOE has introduced the termination of 356 awards totaling $12.5 billion since January 2025, and has threatened to terminate 303 extra awards price $12.2 billion.
However the DOE has additionally stalled tasks for “a lot of awardees who’ve by no means appeared on any record,” the report discovered. “This implies the company isn’t transferring ahead to resolve disputes, finalize conditional awards, or reply to continuation purposes, leaving tasks in administrative limbo and functionally freezing promised funds.”
“DOE each overtly canceled a set of tasks, then had this sample of conduct the place for 15 months they stopped actively managing tasks,” stated one former DOE official. “Initiatives can’t proceed to the following phases and get their subsequent tranche of funding.”
The previous official, who requested to not be named, described a sample of stalling, stonewalling, and “ghosting” utilities, state governments, vitality corporations, and nonprofit teams awarded grants below the Biden administration.
Lots of these tasks have been caught up in a course of the DOE introduced in Might 2025 to evaluation all monetary help “on a case-by-case foundation to identification [sic] waste of taxpayer {dollars}, shield America’s nationwide safety and advance President Trump’s dedication to unleash inexpensive, dependable and safe vitality for the American individuals.”
Then, in October, the DOE introduced the “termination of 321 monetary awards supporting 223 tasks” — all of them tied to states that voted for Kamala Harris within the 2024 election. The DOE’s termination announcement got here proper after Russ Vought, director of the White Home Workplace of Administration and Price range, declared in a social media publish that the administration would cancel “almost $8 billion in Inexperienced New Rip-off funding.”
Canary Media reached out to a subset of DOE grantees that had received funding from the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) program created by the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure regulation. The DOE issued a complete of greater than 100 GRIP grants — in October 2023, August 2024, and October 2024 — for tasks to enlarge the grid, harden it in opposition to excessive climate, construct microgrids to guard susceptible communities, and deploy applied sciences to combine photo voltaic, wind, EVs, and batteries.
A few of the GRIP tasks contain increasing clear vitality and serving deprived communities, two bugbears of the Trump administration. However many extra are simple grid enchancment tasks that want federal {dollars} to cut back the prices borne by utilities and regional or state companies.
The most important of those is in California. In 2024, the DOE awarded a $630.6 million grant geared toward upgrading greater than 100 miles of high-voltage energy strains within the state with superior energy cables able to carrying extra electrical energy alongside current transmission corridors, a undertaking estimated to be able to delivering about $200 million in financial savings from improved vitality effectivity. That undertaking was terminated in October, and the DOE has disbursed no cash for it, in line with federal data.
This uncertainty seems to use to the bulk of GRIP tasks, in line with Emlyn Bottomley, founding father of the consultancy Excessive Street Analytics, which focuses on workforce growth, and a former Division of Labor deputy coverage director within the Biden administration.
In line with his monitoring of federal spending, of the roughly $11.4 billion in DOE funds obligated to grid infrastructure and resilience — a class that features GRIP program funds — $9.1 billion stays “in danger,” with funding stalled or timelines for completion shortened. That’s in contrast with $400 million in grants which have been canceled outright and $1.3 billion not but disbursed however displaying no indicators of being stalled.
“It’s a disgrace these tasks are being held up or canceled, particularly for the reason that case for them is pretty bipartisan — spanning nationwide safety, financial competitiveness, and value and affordability,” Bottomley stated.
The entire GRIP tasks required companions to offer matching funds at an quantity no less than equal to the cash DOE is offering, the previous DOE official added. “You’re speaking about people placing lots of of tens of millions of {dollars} on the road. Individuals have pores and skin within the recreation for these awards.”
The prices of dropping federal funding
Lots of the GRIP grantees contacted by Canary Media declined to remark, citing ongoing discussions with DOE. Others reported that they’re now not pursuing the tasks as described of their grant purposes, no less than not with the assistance of DOE cash.
The latter is the case for Alliant Power’s Good Energy Automation in Rural Communities (SPARC) undertaking, which received a $50 million grant in late 2024 so as to add grid visibility and management gadgets to 140 grid circuits in deprived and tribal communities served by subsidiary Wisconsin Energy & Mild — a utility in a blue state.
These gadgets might enable the utility to shortly discover and isolate faults on its grid, reducing energy outages in focused communities by as much as 50 %. They may additionally help grid-management software program to assist combine extra renewable and distributed vitality, and probably broaden wi-fi communications entry to those distant areas.
Alliant “voluntarily withdrew” from the grant award course of in April, six months after its grant was terminated by the DOE, Alliant spokesperson Melissa McCarville instructed Canary Media. The company has disbursed no funds to the undertaking, in line with federal data.
Alliant is “actively pursuing lots of the objectives that have been outlined within the SPARC undertaking,” McCarville wrote in a Might electronic mail, however as a part of a 10-year strategic plan with no set timeline. “Whereas the grant did present worthwhile funding, it additionally required a vital funding, and we wish to guarantee our contributions are correctly prioritized,” she wrote.
Nonetheless, no less than one grant-funded undertaking in a blue state is continuing regardless of the absence of DOE funds.
That’s the case for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, which serves the state’s capitol and environs. In 2023, SMUD received a $50 million grant to help a undertaking to deploy 200,000 sensible meters and grid gadgets and underlying software program controls to “enhance grid reliability, resilience, visibility and effectivity,” utility spokesperson Gamaliel Ortiz instructed Canary Media in an electronic mail.
SMUD has carried out a lot of that work, which incorporates near $100 million in utility spending, and has obtained virtually $33 million in reimbursements from DOE, in line with federal data. Nonetheless, SMUD “has not obtained reimbursement for any prices incurred after the grant was cancelled on October 10, 2025,” Ortiz wrote. “We stay dedicated to this important work and keep versatile as we consider how the lack of grant funding might influence the undertaking timeline.”
In different blue states, some grants have been canceled and others are nonetheless below negotiation. In Oregon, utility Portland Common Electrical has lately discovered that the DOE might reinstate a beforehand terminated $50 million grant to help next-generation “grid edge computing” gadgets, utility spokesperson John Farmer instructed Canary Media in an August electronic mail. That undertaking had obtained solely $1.2 million in DOE funding, in line with federal data.
The aim of the undertaking was to combine batteries, EVs, and neighborhood photo voltaic into its grid to “enhance resilience, allow the mixing of distributed vitality assets, and maximize buyer investments in residence vitality options.”
“PGE is evaluating the advantages and dangers of reinstating the grant,” Farmer instructed Canary Media. The utility “acknowledges that there are inherent dangers of extra and altering calls for by the DOE because the administration’s priorities change.”
On the identical time, PGE stays in dialogue with the DOE on a $250 million grant to construct a high-voltage transmission line with the Confederated Tribes of Heat Springs, Farmer wrote. “With out this funding, we’d lose the chance to offset these prices with exterior {dollars}, which might restrict how effectively we are able to advance wanted grid enhancements.”
Purple state tasks are additionally being held up as a result of the grantee is positioned in a blue state. Such is the case of the aforementioned $464 million DOE grant for the Joint Focused Interconnection Queue undertaking to construct new transmission strains between the Midcontinent Unbiased System Operator and Southwest Energy Pool, two grid operators spanning almost a dozen Midwestern states.
The $464 million GRIP grant was meant to bolster $1.3 billion in matching funds from utilities within the area to allow almost 30 gigawatts of recent era to be inbuilt Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. All however a type of states voted for Donald Trump within the 2024 election — however the Minnesota Division of Commerce, the entity awarded the grant, is in a blue state.
In Might, the Minnesota Division of Commerce introduced that the DOE “will honor its $464 million grant,” which is able to “unlock greater than $1 billion in extra non-public funding and supply communities throughout the area with financial and infrastructure advantages.”
A DOE spokesperson instructed Canary Media in a July electronic mail that the DOE has carried out its evaluation of GRIP tasks primarily based on a “variety of standards,” together with whether or not it has “achieved the milestones set forth within the phrases of the award,” whether or not it “stays technically and economically possible,” and whether or not it “continues to effectuate the aim of this system or the Division’s priorities.”
The spokesperson added that “not one of the termination choices have been primarily based on political concerns.” That assertion is belied by courtroom testimony reported by The New York Instances final month, wherein a DOE lawyer acknowledged that not one of the October grant terminations have been “primarily based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction or performance-based issue,” and that each one however considered one of them “had a recipient location and/or no less than one place of efficiency in a state that awarded its electoral votes to Kamala Harris within the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing senators.”
Throughout a sequence of congressional hearings in April, Power Secretary Chris Wright acknowledged that the DOE’s evaluation of greater than 20,000 grants was virtually full, and that greater than 80 % of grantees had obtained discover that their awards might proceed as is or with modifications.
However an Alumni Community evaluation of DOE knowledge shared with Congress confirmed that the DOE’s evaluation each failed to revive the overwhelming majority of tasks caught up within the “blue state” termination motion in October and failed to deal with the lots of of tasks which have by no means been formally terminated however stay unable to safe funds.
The revelation of the DOE’s express focusing on of blue states for grant termination spurred 39 Senate Democrats to signal a letter to Wright and Vought demanding the instant restoration of funding for DOE tasks terminated in October.
“As soon as an administration begins punishing Individuals for the way they vote,” the senators wrote, “the risk extends far past these tasks: no state, neighborhood, enterprise, or employee can belief that the federal authorities will apply the regulation pretty.”