The Trump administration is overseeing a chaotic set of changes at the U.S. Department of Energy that could gut its in-house bank and transform one of the government’s key scientific and technology development agencies.
In the coming days, the department could see thousands of its employees — nearly one-fifth of its staff — resign in one of the largest headcount reductions in memory. At the same time, it could cancel billions of dollars in next-generation energy R&D projects in Ohio and other states.
Some of these changes have been planned for weeks. But in recent days, department officials have appeared to grow anxious behind the scenes about the scale of the transformation. Some Trump officials have reached out to individuals, offering them financial incentives in order to discourage them from taking the buyout, according to administration documents and accounts from multiple department employees who were not authorized to speak publicly.
If the full set of changes goes through, then the Department of Energy may be so depleted that it will be unable to carry out the Trump administration’s goals, such as bolstering the power grid or building new power plants.
The upheaval is a result of two policies coming to a head: the department’s “deferred resignation program,” which offers federal employees the equivalent of a severance deal to stop working immediately; and an internal effort to cancel or hinder major industrial policy projects initiated by the Biden administration.
It also arises from agency workers’ confusion and fear over who will ultimately make personnel decisions at the Energy Department, the agency’s own leadership or employees of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
In a statement, an Energy Department spokesperson said the agency was acting in accordance with the president’s executive order creating the government efficiency department.
“The Department of Energy is conducting a department-wide review of its organizational structures to ensure operations are best positioned to accomplish the DOE mission and align with the Trump administration’s priorities,” Andrea Woods, the spokesperson, said. “No final decisions have been made and multiple plans are still being considered.”
The deferred resignation program, which was started by Musk earlier this year, allows employees to resign immediately but receive full pay and benefits through the end of September.
When the resignation program was first made available in February, relatively few department employees took the offer, which resembles a buyout. Many were unsure that they would actually get paid if they accepted the deal.
But employees who took that deal have been getting paid — and at the end of March, Energy Secretary Chris Wright reopened the program and encouraged more employees to accept the resignation deal. He warned that President Donald Trump had ordered the department to conduct a mass “reduction in force” and said that accepting the buyout now could “mitigate the effect of potential involuntary separations.”
This time, the response has been very different. More than 2,700 Energy Department employees have applied for the voluntary resignation program, according to multiple employees who weren’t authorized to speak about the matter publicly. The department recently extended the program’s deadline to this Friday.
If those resignations are accepted, they could reduce the department’s head count by as much as 17%. More resignations are anticipated before the final deadline. The Department of Energy had 15,795 full-time employees as of last year, according to government data.
Some offices have been harder hit than others. The agency’s in-house bank, the Loan Programs Office, could lose half its permanent employees, according to one person who wasn’t authorized to speak about the matter publicly. Analysts have said that the office is essential to countering the low-cost loans that China gives its industrial firms.
Other offices — including those meant to bolster domestic manufacturing and strengthen the power grid — could also lose as much as half their permanent staff.
Many of these cuts are so deep that they could damage the agency’s ability to implement Trump’s agenda. The president has spoken about supporting the nuclear, natural gas, and coal industries — as well as spurring a new mining boom — but he will struggle to meet these goals if the agency is understaffed. The Office of Policy, which directly supports the administration’s agenda, is likely to lose dozens of staff to the program.
Some department leaders have seemingly realized that they may soon manage empty rooms. In some offices, Trump appointees have offered promotions or retention bonuses to career staff to discourage them from leaving, according to employees who weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The bonuses can run to as much as 25% of an employee’s annual salary, according to an internal email reviewed by Heatmap.
But many employees are worried that a coming round of layoffs led by the Department of Government Efficiency could override the preferences of the Energy Department’s own officials, terminating even favored employees. The Musk-led efficiency department hopes to cut more than half of the loan office’s full-time staff, according to one individual. It has placed commissars inside most federal agency buildings, including the Energy Department headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Woods, the Energy Department spokesperson, declined to comment on the number of employees who have applied for the resignation program because it is still open for applications. The department will review and approve each resignation request individually, she said, and it will retain employees working in “public safety, national security, law enforcement” and other “essential” roles.
Yet it is possible to estimate the number of employees who have asked to resign because the department creates a numbered receipt for each employee who enrolls in the program. The numbers, which have increased sequentially, now exceed 2,700, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the receipts who aren’t authorized to speak publicly.
The resignation turmoil comes as the agency considers making other big changes to its policies. Trump officials are in the process of reviewing more than 30 advanced energy demonstration projects slated to be built nationwide, according to documents obtained by Heatmap News. The 2022 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act spent more than $6 billion to fund demonstration programs focused on carbon capture, clean hydrogen, and re-industrialization.
CNN reported this week that one of the projects on the chopping block is a $500 million grant to build a next-generation steel mill in Middletown, Ohio — the hometown of Vice President JD Vance.
The Energy Department has already been experimenting with revoking contracts that the government had previously signed. It remains unclear whether the department can suspend these contracts legally.
Last week, China announced more than 100 new industrial-scale demonstration projects to support clean steel production and carbon capture. The country created 47 new advanced energy demonstration projects last year.
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