Federal agency
Appears in 26 stories
Partnering with DeepMind on Genesis AI-for-science platform
Science magazine named large language models doing frontier science a runner-up breakthrough of 2025. Within weeks, the prediction became reality: OpenAI's GPT-5.2 solved previously unsolved Erdős mathematics problems in 15 minutes, achieving 40% accuracy on expert-level mathematics that stumped earlier systems.
Updated 3 days ago
Funder of the research grant
The Department of Energy gave a University of Utah-led consortium $7.5 million to hunt for critical minerals in places miners usually skip. The target: rare earth elements from unconventional sources, the metals that go into electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, and missile guidance systems.
Updated 4 days ago
Defendant ordered to restore the cancelled grants
A federal judge ordered the Department of Energy to restore $82.1 million in clean energy grants it cancelled in October 2025. Judge Amit Mehta ruled the cancellations violated the Constitution's equal protection guarantee because they singled out grantees in states that voted for Kamala Harris.
Running the SPARK program; selected Three Corners Connector for funding negotiations
The U.S. Department of Energy selected the Three Corners Connector, a 300-mile high-voltage direct current (HVDC) line linking Oklahoma and Colorado, to negotiate for up to $250 million in federal funding. Oklahoma regulators approved the in-state portion in July; Colorado permitting continues.
Updated 5 days ago
Manages the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and executes the exchange program
The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve fell to about 283 million barrels in early October, its lowest level since 1982. The stockpile has declined every week since the drawdown began in late March, after President Trump authorized a 172-million-barrel exchange release.
Approved the grant scope change from hydrogen-ready steel to coal furnace upgrade
The Department of Energy redirected a $500 million clean-steel grant into a coal blast furnace upgrade at Cleveland-Cliffs' Middletown Works in Ohio. The move drops a hydrogen-ready steelmaking plan that would have cut annual emissions by roughly a million tons.
Running the Quantum Genesis Q Competition
The Department of Energy wants a fault-tolerant quantum computer that solves real scientific problems, not just proves physics theory. On September 17, it opened a $215 million milestone competition for private companies to build one by 2028, with applications due October 19.
Updated 7 days ago
Funder of the SPARK program and Indiana grant
Indiana sits on a seam between two of America's largest electricity grids, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator and PJM Interconnection. Power flows across that border are bottlenecked, forcing operators to burn expensive backup generation and driving up costs for ratepayers across the region. On September 25, the U.S. Department of Energy awarded Indiana $175 million to fix it.
Updated Oct 1
Cancelled nearly $8 billion in clean energy grants
Since January 2025, companies and the federal government have cancelled or downsized 216 large-scale clean energy projects across the US. The abandoned projects represent $68.2 billion in capital investment and 468,000 jobs that are no longer supported, according to analysis by BW Research for the clean energy group E2.
Updated Sep 26
Invoking emergency powers to keep generators running and approve LNG exports
On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order declaring a national energy emergency. The order claims the country faces a 'precariously inadequate and intermittent energy supply.' Federal data shows the opposite: oil and gas production sit at record highs.
Updated Sep 25
Administers the SPARK program
America's transmission grid is aging, and new power lines can take a decade to permit. On Sept. 24, the Department of Energy picked a faster route: 31 projects that upgrade existing lines, backed by $1.9 billion in federal money.
Issued the emergency order; lost this case on appeal
A federal appeals court canceled the Department of Energy's order forcing an aging Michigan coal plant to keep running. The unanimous decision said the agency used an emergency power meant for short-term crises to override a retirement plan approved by the plant's owner, Michigan regulators, and the regional grid operator.
Updated Sep 14
Canceled 321 awards October 2025; restored LuxWall via cost-share agreement
LuxWall's Detroit glass factory was on track to open in late 2026. In October 2025, the Department of Energy terminated the $31.7 million federal grant behind it. Nine months of appeals and political pressure later, the agency confirmed it will keep funding the project under a negotiated cost-share agreement.
Updated Sep 10
Primary funder of PacWave South
The first wave energy test site connected to the continental US electric grid opened off Oregon's coast this week. PacWave South took a decade to permit and build, backed by nearly $150 million in federal investment.
Updated Aug 27
Sets national hydrogen cost targets
For a decade, hydrogen made from renewable power has cost far more than the hydrogen refineries pull from natural gas. In January 2026, researchers in China and Singapore built a solar-powered device that skips one of the two normal products of splitting water. Instead of making oxygen, it oxidizes sugar from crop waste, producing hydrogen plus formate, a chemical that sells, and that side income cuts the cost to $1.54 a kilogram.
Updated Aug 21
Owns the land; convened the partnership
A Cold War uranium plant near Paducah, Kentucky enriched fuel for bombs and reactors, then sat idle after 2013. Now a coalition led by Brookfield and NextEra Energy plans to spend about $100 billion turning part of that federal land into one of the country's largest AI computing campuses.
Updated Jul 29
Issued and now enforces the rule
Companies and universities that take Energy Department money now face a much bigger in-house fraud penalty. On July 13, 2026, a DOE rule raised the cap on administrative false-claims cases from $150,000 to $1 million per claim.
Updated Jul 13
Initiated the directive
For decades, the cost of upgrading the power grid was spread across everyone's electric bill. On June 18, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) acted on a rule that could put much of that cost on the data centers that trigger it.
Updated Jun 18
Federal projection authority for VPP capacity
For most of the twentieth century the U.S. power grid moved electricity in one direction: from large central plants to homes and businesses. A Pew Charitable Trusts report released April 28 documents how twelve states and Puerto Rico have now written rules letting aggregated rooftops, batteries, water heaters, and thermostats be dispatched together as a single power plant. The category is called a virtual power plant, or VPP, and for the first time, it's moving from utility pilots into mainstream state regulation.
Updated May 31
Coordinating domestic nuclear fuel supply chain expansion
For decades, the United States outsourced its nuclear fuel supply chain to Russia. President Biden ended that in May 2024 by banning Russian uranium imports, triggering a scramble to rebuild domestic capabilities before the waiver period expires in 2028.
Updated May 29
Authorizes LNG exports to non-free-trade-agreement countries
When Cheniere Energy shipped America's first LNG cargo from Louisiana in February 2016, the U.S. was a net gas importer. A decade later, the country leads the world in LNG exports, with capacity set to more than double by 2029.
Updated May 27
Primary regulator for Reactor Pilot Program
The Energy Department published its secretly rewritten nuclear safety rules on February 26, about a month after NPR first reported their existence. By early March, Aalo Atomics had completed its Critical Test Reactor at Idaho National Laboratory — assembled in 40 days, the first new reactor built at INL in 50 years — and said it would go critical within weeks.
Issuing emergency orders to keep fossil plants online
Between 1977 and 2000, the Energy Secretary used Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act exactly zero times; since May 2025, it has been invoked more than 40 times. On May 22, Secretary Chris Wright added another, directing Talen Energy to run a 54-year-old oil-fired unit outside Baltimore beyond its environmental run cap from now through August 19.
Updated May 22
Leading domestic nuclear fuel supply chain rebuilding
The United States performed less than 1% of global uranium enrichment when the Department of Energy announced $2.7 billion in contracts to three companies on January 21, 2026. Russia controls 44% of global enrichment capacity and supplied roughly a quarter of American reactor fuel until Congress banned imports in 2024. The last U.S.-owned enrichment facility shut down in 2013.
Lead agency for Genesis Mission
The White House mobilized America's 17 national laboratories and major tech companies—OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA. The Genesis Mission aims to double US research productivity in a decade by connecting supercomputers, quantum systems, and AI into one discovery platform. Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced 24 corporate partners at a January 11 summit.
Updated May 20
Opening federal land for nuclear-powered AI data centers
Alphabet just paid $4.75 billion for a power company, securing 10.8 gigawatts of capacity—enough to power 8 million homes. Tech giants spent 2024 locking down nuclear reactors and signing multibillion-dollar energy deals because there's not enough electricity for AI.
Updated May 16
No stories match your search
Try a different keyword
How would you like to describe your experience with the app today?
