Trump’s clean energy cuts make America’s power grid more vulnerable
By The Conversation | Published: 2025-10-31 16:18:00 | Source: Fast Company – news
The Trump administration is expansive Eliminate and freeze clean energy financing It also hits the groundwork to improve the country’s electricity grid. This includes investments in grid modernization, energy storage, and efforts to protect communities from power outages during severe weather and cyberattacks. Terminating these projects leaves Americans vulnerable to more frequent and longer-lasting power outages.
The Ministry of Energy defended the cancellations, saying that “the projects It was not enough to meet the country’s energy needsThese grants were not economically viable and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars. But before any funds can actually be released through these programs, each grant must go through. Evaluations based on department standards. These include careful assessments of technical merits, potential risks, and cost-benefit analyzes – all designed to ensure alignment with national energy priorities and responsible management of public funds.
I Associate Professor Study sustainability, with more 15 years of experience in power system reliability and resilience. In the past, she also served as the director of a Department of Energy program focused on grid resilience. I know that many of these canceled grants were foundational investments in the science and infrastructure needed to keep the lights on, especially when the grid is under stress.
Estimates of the value of a dollar vary, and some funds differ It has already been spent. A List of canceled projects The maintenance value held by energy analysis company Yardsale is approximately US$5 billion. Announcement dated October 2, 2025 from management It touts $7.5 billion in discounts on 321 awards In 223 projects. Additional documents leaked to POLITICO Additional awards have reportedly been identified and are under review. Some media reports suggest the full value of liabilities at risk may reach 24 billion dollars— a number that the Trump administration has neither publicly confirmed nor refuted.
These were not speculative projects. Some of them have been awarded competitively awarded projects specifically funded by the Ministry to enhance network efficiency, reliability and resilience.
Financing network improvement
For many years, the federal government Criticized for investing too little In the country’s electricity grid. Long-term planning and spending is necessary to ensure that the network reliably serves the public more often It falls victim to short-term political cycles Changing priorities between the two parties.
But these latest cuts come amid Increasingly frequent severe weather, Increased cybersecurity threats To the systems that keep the lights on, and the legacy network equipment He is nearing the end of his life.
These projects sought to make the network more reliable so that it could withstand storms, hackers, accidents, and other problems.
National laboratories
In addition to canceling these projects, President Donald Trump’s proposed 2026 budget contains significant budget cuts Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energyan essential source of funding for many National laboratoriesincluding National Renewable Energy Laboratorywhich you may encounter Large-scale layoffs.
Among other work, these laboratories conduct basic network-related research such as developing and testing methods Sending more electricity over existing power linesand create computational models to simulate how the US grid operates Responds to severe weather or cyber attacksand analysis Real-time operational data To identify weak points and enhance reliability.
These efforts are essential to designing, operating, and managing the network, and knowing how best to achieve this Integrating new technologies.
Network resilience and modernization
Some of the projects that lost funding sought to modernize grid management – including better sensing real-time voltage and frequency changes in the electricity sent to homes and businesses.
that program, Network Resilience and Innovation Partnerships ProgrammeIt has also funded efforts to automate grid operations, allowing faster response to outages or changes in production from power plants. It also supported the development of microgrids – local systems that can operate independently during power outages. The projects canceled in this program, Estimated total of $724.6 millionThey were in 24 states.
For example, A $19.5 million The project in the upper Midwest was supposed to install smart sensors and software to detect overloaded power lines or equipment failure, helping people respond faster to power outages and prevent blackouts.
A 50 million dollars The project in California would have enhanced the capacity of existing subtransmission lines, and improved power stability and grid resiliency by installing a smart substation, without the need for new transmission corridors.
Microgrid projects in New York, New Mexicoand Hawaii It would have kept essential services running during disasters, cyberattacks, and planned power outages.
Another canceled project is included 11 million dollars To help facilities in 12 states use Electric school buses as backup batteriesDelivering power during emergencies and peak demand, such as hot summer days.
Several transportation projects have also been canceled, including a $464 million effort in the Midwest Coordinate multiple network connections from new generation sites.
Long-term energy storage
The grid must meet demand at all times, even when wind and solar generation is low or when severe weather takes down power lines. The key element to this includes stability Storing huge amounts of electricity When it is needed.
One canceled project would have been spent $70 million to convert retired coal plants In Minnesota and Colorado to buildings containing iron-air batteries capable of providing energy Several thousand homes for up to four days.
Rural and remote energy systems
Another terminated program sought help People living in rural or remote areaswho are often served by one or two power lines rather than a grid that can reroute power around an outage.
30 million dollars Small bioenergy project It would help three rural California communities convert forest and agricultural waste into electricity.
Not all of the terminated initiatives were explicitly designed to enhance resilience. Some would have enhanced network stability as a byproduct of their main goals. Undo $1.2 billion in Hydrogen Center investmentsFor example, it undermines projects that would combine industrial decarbonization with large-scale energy storage to balance renewable energy. Likewise, many industrial modernization projects have been cancelled, e.g Hybrid electric ovens and Low carbon cement plantsto manage energy demand and integrate clean energy to improve grid stability and resilience.
The reliability paradox
Management said that this Discounts will save money. But in practice, it shifts spending from preventing prolonged blackouts to recovering from them.
Without advances in technology and equipment, network operators face frequent outages, longer recovery times, and higher maintenance costs. Without investing in systems that can withstand storms or hackers, taxpayers and taxpayers will ultimately bear the costs of repairing the damage.
Some of the projects now on hold were intended to allow hospitals, schools and emergency centers to reduce the risk of power outages and speed up power restoration. These are essential public reliability and safety functions, not partisan initiatives.
Canceling programs to improve the grid leaves utilities and their customers to rely on temporary emergency solutions — diesel generators, power outages, reactive maintenance — rather than forward-looking solutions.
Roshanak (Roshi) Nategi He is an associate professor of sustainability at Georgetown University.
This article was republished from Conversation Under Creative Commons license. Read Original article.
The early deadline for Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 PM PT. Apply today.
(tags for translation) Clean energy
ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ
