Last year, Energy Secretary Chris Wright floated plans to bolster nuclear power, advance artificial intelligence, support fossil fuels and develop emerging industries like fusion.
In 2026, the central question is: How will he execute that strategy?
“This is going to be an implement and grind year,” said Tom Pyle, president of the conservative Institute for Energy Research think tank and leader of the Trump administration’s Department of Energy transition team in 2016.
More details are set to emerge in the coming months about DOE’s plans to fund administration priorities like small nuclear reactors, build data centers on federal land and hinder efficiency standards.
The department is expected to unveil additional proposals to boost gas, keep coal plants running longer and advance the mining sector.
“So not only just supporting those companies, but literally acting like a company, like finding mineral assets, finding ways to extract them, finding ways to make money off of them,” said Kate Gordon, CEO of the nonprofit California Forward and a former adviser to Secretary Jennifer Granholm in the Biden administration.
At a United States Energy Association forum Thursday in Washington, Wright said he will be focusing on trying to increase fuel and electricity supplies, including by expediting permits for exporting liquefied natural gas.
“We will ensure that natural gas will continue to grow rapidly around the world,” he said.
Wright is overseeing much of President Donald Trump’s plans to build up and transfer money from the Venezuelan oil sector, a task that could be “time consuming,” said Pyle, though he said the secretary could handle the juggling act.
“He’s pretty sharp,” Pyle said.
Democrats, meanwhile, are arguing DOE’s rollbacks of many Biden-era policies and projects are illegal as environmental groups eye lawsuits on the issue.
Here are four issues to watch at DOE in 2026.
The money flow
DOE has long made a dent on the energy sector through its money-distributing authority, and 2026 may be no different.
Wright has said DOE’s loan office — now called the Office of Energy Dominance Finance — and other grants are likely to be tapped to boost nuclear power, although which additional companies and projects might receive funding is not fully clear.
It also could be determined this year how much the administration plans to support other priorities such as geothermal and natural gas — decisions that could affect development of many technologies.
Other funding issues to watch include whether DOE will take direct stakes in companies — as it did with mining company Lithium Americas last year.
The administration is eyeing “more creative ways in which we do deals with private businesses, that we can generate oil without any government cash and put it in the [strategic petroleum] reserve,” Wright said at a Goldman Sachs conference in Florida earlier this month.
Also closely scrutinized is the fate of billions of dollars from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law and conditional loans issued by the Biden administration.
“Many people are keeping a close eye on … what stays funded and what gets unfunded,” Gordon said.
The infrastructure law specified how DOE money should be spent on projects like hydrogen hubs, Gordon said, and “there’s still money to be spent in tranches. Will it be spent where it’s supposed to be spent or redirected?”
Gordon is among those who has argued that the administration’s cutting of the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations and other grants flout U.S. laws.
The Trump administration has moved forward with Biden-era loans in some cases, including $1.6 billion to American Electric Power to upgrade transmission lines in five states. But it nixed support for the Grain Belt Express transmission line in the Midwest tied to renewable projects, and the status of other conditional loans is murky.
One lobbyist familiar with internal operations said it’s possible DOE could try to block projects it doesn’t favor by running out the clock on the typical two-year window for projects to meet conditions before a loan is finalized.
“There’s a real concern” among developers about that, said the person, who was granted anonymity to protect conversations with clients.
In October, DOE announced more than $7.5 billion in project terminations mainly in blue states, and Wright vowed there would be additional cancellations. But the fate of more than $20 billion in potentially targeted projects is up in the air, including for five hydrogen hubs supported by the infrastructure law. Several of those hubs were aiming to deploy gas with carbon capture.
What happens to the funding could not only affect emerging technologies but DOE’s overall pot of money. Typically, deobligated funds are returned to the Treasury if they are not being challenged by affected companies, but there are restrictions on how they can be reused because they are supposed to follow the original statutory purpose directed by Congress.
Adding to the uncertainty is a pending DOE inspector general investigation of the project cancellations and a federal judge’s order Monday to restore nearly $28 million in nixed grants to seven recipients who argued the administration acted punitively against states Kamala Harris won in the 2024 presidential election.
While that legal order doesn’t apply to the full $7.5 billion in cuts, it could make other cancellations vulnerable to lawsuits if recipients can show the administration followed similar reasoning in making terminations, said David Super, a law and economics professor at Georgetown University.
“But this administration often takes a ‘scorched Earth’ approach to litigation, so I would not assume it will restore funding even to these seven grantees without further litigation,” Super said.
DOE did not respond to request for comment on its priorities for the year or future project cancellations.
In response to the judge’s order, DOE spokesperson Ben Dietderich said in a statement that the department stands “by our review process which evaluated these awards individually and determined they did not meet the standards necessary to justify the continued spending of taxpayer dollars.”
A nuclear boom?
The loan office and DOE grants are considered a lifeline for nuclear power, which commercial banks often avoid because of the complex process of building reactors.
The industry also is monitoring implementation of May 2025 executive orders aimed at boosting nuclear, including directives to overhaul the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, create a DOE pilot program to test private companies’ advanced reactor designs, and give DOE and the Pentagon a greater role in licensing reactors.
The pilot program faces a key test this year, as it aims to make three reactors critical — or sustaining a fission reaction — by July 4, 2026. Participating companies are footing the bill with support from DOE facilities.
“We think that this is an amazing opportunity to not only test our reactor but also work towards having a speedy path for commercialization,” said Ray Wert, vice president of communications at Radiant Nuclear, a microreactor startup participating in the pilot program.
But critics say DOE’s efforts are eroding an essential safety-first approach to nuclear power.
“Nuclear reactors are not inherently unsafe, but they are inherently unforgiving,” said Stephen Smith, executive director at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. “There should be an abundance of caution. So I don’t understand why they’re rushing like this.”
Adam Stein, director of nuclear energy and innovation at the Breakthrough Institute, a supporter of expanded nuclear power, is keeping an eye on how DOE and the NRC work together.
Congress created the NRC to be the sole, independent regulator of commercial nuclear power plants, but language in the May executive orders suggests DOE could pre-clear reactor designs with limited NRC review.
The NRC has since released guidance and updated a fall 2025 memorandum of understanding, saying it should only consider changes to safety analyses based on “design changes” rather than “revisiting risks that have already been addressed in the DOE review.”
“That could be read a few ways, and implementation is going to be important,” Stein said, noting that test reactors in the pilot program are very likely to go through design changes before seeking an NRC license.
DOE is also moving to deploy data centers at four federal sites, a plan that is expected to involve nuclear power. The department hasn’t fully detailed how the data centers will be powered, but deploying nuclear plants could potentially skirt NRC oversight, since the Trump administration has declared artificial intelligence data centers a national security issue.
At the USEA forum, Wright said companies do “not have to go through a normal procurement process” to build on federal land, speeding up permitting.
“Our compensation is mostly coming in the form of in-kind computing power, massive computing power,” he said.
Efficiency rules
Wright is expected to continue targeting one of DOE’s main regulatory tools: setting mandatory efficiency standards for appliances.
In May, the Energy secretary unveiled plans to roll back existing standards for 17 products, including microwave ovens and battery chargers. At the time, he said DOE was slashing regulations that “restrict consumer choice and increase costs for the American people.”
But the proposed rollbacks were not finalized last year after comment periods, leaving industry watchers anticipating that they might advance in 2026.
“We’re gearing up for litigation,” said Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, noting that existing standards remain in tact for now. Lawsuits can’t be filed until the rules are final, said deLaski, whose group advocates for standards.
According to environmentalists, the rules are illegal because they violate an anti-backsliding clause in existing law blocking new standards from being weaker for a covered product than what is already on the books. Rolling back standards would increase costs for consumers and raise emissions, they say.
Several manufacturers and industry groups such as the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers also submitted comments opposing the proposed regulations, warning they could strand existing investments.
Wright and his conservative allies argue that efficiency rules are burdensome for manufacturers.
“The program has been stretched well beyond its statutory intent and used as a vehicle for climate policy,” wrote Ben Lieberman, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute conservative think tank, in a December brief.
DOE officials have told manufacturers that additional regulations are coming — a move that could affect some of the biggest energy-using appliances such as water heaters and central air conditioners. Many of those larger products — chief drivers of energy bills — were not part of the initial batch of 17 rules.
In its most recent regulatory agenda, DOE signaled it is planning to overhaul the “process rule” that governs how the department runs the efficiency standards program. That plan could “make it harder for DOE to set standards in the future,” deLaski said.
The first Trump administration issued a similar regulation that was later reversed when Biden entered office in 2021. Last week, DOE sent its plan on the process rule to the Office of Management and Budget, suggesting a proposed overhaul could be arriving soon.
DOE also is eyeing a rule similar to one in Trump’s first term that would make it harder to use efficient technology on gas appliances like water heaters, according to the agenda.
Additionally, it is planning a regulation that would override an Obama-era plan to allow states to develop stricter water efficiency standards than the federal level on plumbing products. Currently, 18 states have set such stricter standards, according to deLaski.
Reorganization aftermath
Wright’s sweeping reorganization of DOE offices announced in November could have ripple effects across the energy sector in 2026, particularly for administration priorities such as fossil fuels, AI and mining.
Assistant Secretary of Energy Audrey Robertson, who leads the newly minted Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation, has been touting the office as bringing together formerly disparate activities at DOE focused on mining, processing, recycling and educating new mining specialists — and strengthening the nation’s ability to take on China.
The mining industry also is watching closely whether there will be additional financing like that for the Thacker Pass mine in Nevada, which received a $2.3 billion loan guarantee after the department took a 5 percent equity stake in it.
With AI and emerging technologies, industry leaders are tracking not only how the reorganization affects funding but potential partnerships with the department.
As one example, DOE said in November there would be more deals with technology companies to expand the government’s supercomputing and AI power. DOE has also vowed to help commercialize fusion — which envisions using the same reaction powering the sun and stars for electricity — through a newly created office and a road map, with many milestones set for this year.
In other cases, officials will have to sort out how to mesh congressional appropriations with the new structure.
The geothermal technologies office, for instance, receives funding from the former Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), which has now been submerged into the new minerals office. At the same time, DOE has a separate Hydrocarbons and Geothermal Energy Office because of the reorganization.
Nick Montoni, the deputy chief of staff for EERE under Biden, said the shift creates an “operational challenge” as money from the new minerals office now needs to be shifted over to the geothermal and hydrocarbons branch.
“This means multiple budget offices and sets of books need to be kept updated and aligned, rather than just one,” said Montoni in an emailed analysis.
“Reorganization of federal agencies can be a useful tool to ensure that staff and organizations are set up to deliver on congressional direction and administration goals,” Montoni said, though “on the other hand, reorganizing an agency always diverts attention from the mission.”
Reporters Hannah Northey and Carlos Anchondo contributed.
