Media coverage of President Donald Trump’s recommended Department of Energy budget has been predictably negative. It has focused heavily on his proposed cuts, with the word “slash” appearing in numerous headlines. But his budget is more accurately described as a major policy shift—and a very beneficial one.
If Congress passes this budget so the president can sign it into law, then it’s goodbye to using the Department to impose an unpopular and expensive energy transition on the American people, and hello to a policy of energy abundance and dominance.
The White House suggested canceling over $15 billion in funding for an assortment of programs that forced unreliable and economically unsustainable so-called green energy programs into our energy infrastructure. This is a win for American taxpayers and energy users.
These programs are not only expensive, they displace reliable and affordable energy sources such as coal and natural gas with intermittent energy, mostly wind and solar. Were America to continue down this road, it will be only a matter of time before the nation experiences blackouts similar to the one in Spain last month, as well as an expansion of energy rationing—which some parts of the country have already seen at times of peak summer demand.
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But it’s not just the climate-focused offices that had their budgets reduced—DOE’s other programmatic offices were cut as well. The Office of Nuclear Energy was cut by more than $400 million, the Office of Fossil Energy was cut by $270 million, and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy was cut by more than $2.5 billion.
These proposed cuts should also be applauded. While more details will emerge, it seems like the administration is moving away from using taxpayer money to push technologies into the market and instead focusing on developing new cutting-edge technologies and solving more basic, underlying technological and scientific questions.
This is the kind of work that can be broadly applicable throughout the energy industry. It could even result in breakthroughs that the private sector could then commercialize and make available to the public.
If this budget does reflect a shift in focus away from commercialization and towards more basic research, the nation will be much better off. It means that American companies, rather than politicians and government officials, will decide what energy sources are used.
This theme is carried out through other offices in the Department as well. The Office of Science, for example, is reducing spending on climate change research and is instead focusing on areas such as quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and critical minerals.
The agency known as ARPA-E (Advance Research Projects Agency-Energy) is being similarly refocused. By cutting $260 million, ARPA-E can dedicate its resources to funding a narrower set of high-risk, high-reward programs that could make a significant contribution to America’s energy goals. This benefits Americans and restores the program to its original intent.
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Though details of the budget have yet to be released, it is clear the administration is changing the Department of Energy’s priorities for the better. However, more should be done in the coming years.
America became energy rich due to the efforts of the private sector and not the federal government. The Department of Energy was born out of a fear in the 1970s that America was entering an era of energy scarcity and that government action was necessary to mitigate that risk.
In fact, the opposite was true. Thus, if the conditions that originally justified the Department of Energy’s creation no longer exist, it is worth asking why we need such a department.
While much of the work done in the department is important, particularly its work to clean up the nuclear weapons complex and its cutting-edge scientific research, much of its energy-focused spending is unnecessary and crowds out work that could be done by private researchers, either in companies or in universities.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that closing the Department of Energy is the next step. But it does mean that many more cuts could likely be made in future budgets. Such cuts would allow the federal government to focus on what it does best, while leaving other functions to the men and women in our energy sector—who have brought us energy dominance. Let’s hope that Congress gets the message and passes the president’s proposed budget.
