Energy Budget Blueprint Cuts $19.3 Billion From Biden-Era Initiatives

House panels get first glimpse of Department of Energy’s $45 billion spending request, which is nearly 10-percent less than this year’s enacted budget.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright looks on during an "Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies" House subcommittee hearing on the department's budget on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 7, 2025. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

The Trump administration’s proposed budget for the Department of Energy (DOE) cuts $19.3 billion in dedicated funding for Biden-era “green energy” initiatives.

Overall, the Department of Energy’s $45.1 billion spending request is 9.4 percent less than this year’s $52 billion budget but increases funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration, which develops and maintains the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal, by 25 percent.

Without that bump, the remainder of the proposed Department of Energy budget trims spending by 18.2 percent, cutting $15.2 billion in allocations from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, $2.6 billion from its Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, $1.1 billion from its Office of Science, and $389 million from its Office of Environmental Management.

The House Energy Committee’s Energy and Water Development Subcommittee got its first glimpse of the tentative plan during a 135-minute May 7 hearing.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright cautioned that further changes are likely with the Trump administration ferreting through tentative “skinny budgets” to find more than $163 billion in cuts.

“President Trump is committed to balancing the budget and implementing fiscal restraint, focusing agency funding on the crucial goal of unleashing American energy dominance,” Subcommittee Chair Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) said.

“This is a commitment I share and a duty I intend to fulfill.”

Fleischmann said the administration’s budget refocuses policy on production rather than mitigating climate-related impacts and gears resources into expanding the nation’s electrical grid to accommodate increasing demand spurred by data center development, artificial intelligence computing, and bitcoin “mining.”

Fleischmann praised the administration for ending former President Joe Biden’s pause on liquified natural gas exports, for its deregulatory actions, and for opening federal lands and waters to more fossil fuel development.

Fleischmann also said that lawmakers “still are awaiting the full details of the president’s fiscal 2026 budget request.”