The Energy Department said on Wednesday night that it would cancel more than $7.5 billion in Biden-era awards for hundreds of energy projects, with the vast majority located in states led by Democrats.
The move underscored how the Trump administration appeared to be using the government shutdown as a pretext to punish its political opponents. President Trump said this week that if Democrats in Congress did not vote for a funding bill to keep the government open, he would “do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them.”
In its Wednesday announcement, the Energy Department did not specify which projects would see their funding terminated. But according to an agency document reviewed by The New York Times, the list of affected projects include major upgrades to electrical grids in California, Minnesota and Oregon; efforts to reduce methane leaks from oil and gas operations in Colorado; and large hubs to produce clean-burning hydrogen fuels in California and the Pacific Northwest.
The vast majority of the 321 canceled awards would have gone toward projects in those states as well as Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Mexico, New York and Washington, the document showed. Those states all have Democratic governors and senators.
In a news release, the Energy Department said it had determined that the 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.”
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