POWER-GRID RESILIENCETrump Is Blocking Billions of Dollars of Grants That Would Fix the Grid

By Jeff St. John, Canary Media

This story was originally published by Canary Media and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.​

In Wisconsin, utility Alliant Energy has called off a project meant to reduce power outages in disadvantaged and tribal communities, after the Trump administration terminated a federal grant that would have supported it.

In California, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, which has deployed and upgraded hundreds of thousands of advanced smart meters, has not received any reimbursement from the U.S. Department of Energy, or DOE, for the work since October, when the Trump administration declared it was killing grants that it described as fueling ​“the Left’s climate agenda.”

And in the upper Midwest, a consortium of regional grid operators, utilities, and state agencies is still waiting for $464 million in DOE funds meant to help build high-voltage transmission lines to reduce grid congestion — although the agency in charge of the project says the funding will soon be restored.

Across the country, hundreds of such projects to improve grid reliability and make electricity more affordable face a highly uncertain future — the result of Trump administration actions that have slowed the outflow of billions of dollars of DOE funds to a trickle.

Some of those projects in ​“blue states”were targeted as political retribution, as recent reporting from The New York Times has made clear. A handful of grant awardees in this category have won favorable court rulings, and more are seeking legal redress.

But many others are suffering from the DOE’s broader failure to carry out work that Congress has tasked it to do, according to groups that have been monitoring the agency since the start of last year. In red and blue states alike, the DOE is forcing thousands of grantees to undergo a laborious review process, so even projects that have not been officially terminated are stuck, unable to determine when or if they’ll start getting the money they’re owed.

According to an April report from the DOE Alumni Network, a group of former agency employees, the DOE has announced the termination of 356 awards totaling $12.5 billion since January 2025, and has threatened to terminate 303 additional awards worth $12.2 billion.

But the DOE has also stalled projects for ​“a large number of awardees who have never appeared on any list,”the report found. ​“This means the agency is not moving forward to resolve disputes, finalize conditional awards, or respond to continuation applications, leaving projects in administrative limbo and functionally freezing promised funds.”