On October 2, 2025, DOE announced that it would terminate 321 financial awards previously awarded to support 223 projects. DOE claimed that “these 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.” The terminations have been challenged in a lawsuit, City of St. Paul v. Wright, in which the plaintiffs allege DOE’s claim of “waste” was pretextual and the terminations violate the First Amendment because they are done “selectively to punish or suppress speech” the administration dislikes.
Some of the terminated financial awards were funded by IRA section 50161, along with funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and other appropriations. IRA Section 50161 appropriated $5.8 billion to the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) to provide financial assistance to U.S. industrial and manufacturing facilities to purchase, install, or retrofit certain “advanced industrial technology” for energy-intensive industrial processes, such as steel, aluminum, chemical, paper, cement, and concrete production.