On Oct. 2, the Trump Department of Energy announced it was cancelling over $7.5 billion in federal funding for 223 clean energy projects that the administration argues would be a waste of taxpayer dollars. The projects are mostly in states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election.

But President Trump’s own landmark legislation signed in July, the “Big Beautiful Bill,” grants an additional $4 billion a year in new taxpayer subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. According to a recent report from Oil Change International, including existing fossil fuel subsidies, the U.S. federal government will subsidize the production of oil, gas, and coal by at least $34.8 billion per year in coming years.

Collin Rees, United States Campaigns Manager at Oil Change International, said the Trump Administration is not really interested in free market capitalism and keeping the hand of government away from the energy industry, as it claims. Instead, the administration is trying to undermine clean energy to reward Trump’s fossil fuel donors, which spent over $200 million to elect Trump and Republicans in Congress last election.

“The Trump Administration uses ‘free market’ rhetoric to disguise its preferential treatment of the fossil fuel industry,” Rees said. “Trump doesn’t want the public to understand that he’s using our money to enrich the fossil fuel CEOs and investors who drive the climate crisis.”

Rees pointed out that the Trump Administration has even attempted to cancel clean energy projects that are 80-90 percent complete, like the Revolution offshore wind farm in New England. This wind project was set to generate enough electricity to power upwards of 350,000 homes starting next year before being derailed by the administration. Recently, a federal judge ruled that the Danish energy company Orsted could restart work on the project.

In a recent demonstration of the administration’s hypocrisy on subsidies for the energy industry, on Sept. 4, Jarrold Agen, executive director of the Energy Dominance Council, a White House advisory committee, suggested that investors should only support energy projects that are free-market based. He implied that solar energy and wind power, for example, couldn't exist without federal tax breaks. “Certainty is in investing capital into projects that are not reliant on tax dollars,” Agen said during a talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

But Agen did not mention the additional $4 billion a year in tax dollars that the administration had just granted this summer to the fossil fuel industry.

The Oct. 2 cancellation of the clean energy funding was just the latest escalation of the Trump Administration’s attacks on wind and solar power, including permitting delays, investigations into things like bird deaths, and withdrawing federal lands and waters that were previously available for leasing for clean energy projects.

Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at Conservation Law Foundation, said the rescinded grants were driving innovation in everything from battery recycling, to grid reliability, to heat pumps.

“The federal government has long provided investment in burgeoning but immature technologies and companies, and that’s exactly what these clean energy grants were for,” she said. “Meanwhile, polluting fossil fuel companies keep receiving special treatment and financial breaks. That’s not smart energy policy; it’s a giveaway to some of the richest corporations in the world.”

President Trump has long disparaged efforts to combat global climate change, which scientists view as not only real but a grave threat to human health and prosperity. At the United Nations General Assembly in late September, Trump called climate change, “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”

“All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong,” he said to the gathering of the world’s top diplomats. “They were made by stupid people that have cost their countries fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success. If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.”

An international group of leading scientists coordinated by the United Nations has concluded that: “multiple independent studies have found that between 90 and 100 percent of scientists agree that humans are responsible for climate change.”  

“Climate change is already affecting every region on Earth” including through “changes in rainfall patterns, rising sea levels, melting glaciers, a warming ocean, and more frequent and intense extreme weather events,” according to the leading scientists.

The recent cancellation of U.S. clean energy grants impacted mostly projects in Democratic-leaning states. However, an analysis released by congressional Democrats shows that a few of the cancelled funds will also hit projects located in states that voted for Trump — including Tennessee, South Carolina, North Dakota, Iowa, and Florida. The cuts will impact districts led by 136 members of Congress, including 108 Democrats and 28 Republicans. 

Among the cuts are for a California hydrogen fuel project called ARCHES H2 LLC, which lost $1.2 billion in federal funds, and for the Seattle-based Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Association, which lost $1 billion. But also on the chopping block is $6.5 million in funding for a GE Vernova clean energy project in South Carolina and $2.9 million for a similar project in Iowa, according to the report by Congressional Democrats.

“The termination of these critical energy projects will increase energy prices, eliminate jobs, and make the energy grid less reliable,” the report said.

Whether sited in red or blue states, the Trump administration has a long track record of criticizing federal tax breaks that go to clean energy projects, while at the same time supporting subsidies for the oil and gas industry. 

On his first day back in office on Jan. 20, Trump signed the executive order "Unleashing American Energy,” directing federal agencies to pause the disbursement of funds for clean energy projects from the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, two landmark laws signed by President Biden.

A recent report from Public Citizen said that, before the start of Trump’s second term, there was hope that Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright would exert their influence to favor an “all of the above” energy strategy that leaves room for both fossil fuels and renewables. 

“Hopes for this sort of approach proved short lived,” states the report. “Just a few months later, Burgum and Wright and other top Trump administration officials are now actively undermining renewables and openly favoring coal.”

Just last week, the Department of Energy announced an over $600 million federal subsidy to help keep the nation’s coal plants operating in the face of competition from more competitive clean energy sources.

In another example, in August, the Department of Interior said it was reversing the Biden Administration’s “misguided” decision to approve the Lava Ridge Wind Project. This large wind farm planned for southern Idaho is opposed by some state lawmakers because it would be visible from the Minidoka National Historic Site, a World War II internment camp for Japanese Americans, among other things.

“The Department is putting the brakes on deficient, unreliable energy and putting the American people first," said Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum at the time of the announcement.

The Department of Interior’s approach is at odds with the rapid growth of renewable energy over the last fifteen years. Renewables accounted for nearly 25 percent of the U.S. electricity mix in 2024, up from 11 percent in 2010. Fossil fuels accounted for less than 50 percent of electricity generated in the U.S. in March 2025, marking the first month on record that fossil fuels produced less than half of American energy.