The Department of Energy’s misleading climate report is getting a second life in Florida.
The state is leaning on the report — which uses debunked arguments to downplay the risks of global warming — to claim that local government spending on electric vehicles, renewable energy and climate resilience is “ill-advised and wasteful.”
“Local officials should by now be aware that most climate ideology is not backed by reliable science,” reads a new report from Florida’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Florida DOGE relies almost entirely on DOE’s report to dispute the scientific consensus on climate change, portraying local spending on climate as “an expensive example of virtue-signaling.”
“Specifically, there are serious problems both with the claimed science underlying climate change hysteria, and the proposed responses,” the DOGE report authors write, by turns denying rising temperatures, excusing them as part of natural cycles and claiming greenhouse gas emissions benefit society.
Led by state Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, Florida’s DOGE is empowered to audit local governments as part of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ bid to restrict property taxes. The team’s report, released last week, compiles months of scrutiny of city and county spending.
The report focuses in particular on climate programs, with DOGE calling into question not just specific spending decisions, but the very notion of “a so-called climate crisis” harming Florida at all.
DOGE heavily cites the DOE report, which it calls a “rigorous critique of the supposed justification for this spending, most of which has long been absent from the public narrative.” It also cites the work of Arthur Viterito, a retired geography professor associated with the conservative think tank Heartland Institute, to suggest ocean temperatures are rising because of underwater volcanic activity.
DeSantis and Ingoglia did not respond to questions about the DOGE report.
Growing influence
Florida Republicans are not the only officials using the DOE report as a justification for their policy goals. A coalition of Republican attorneys general also cited the DOE report as justification for their effort to remove the climate science section from a judicial manual.
In a letter sent last week to the Federal Judicial Center, the attorneys general criticize the authors of the climate science section for not consulting with “any of the leading experts from the Department of Energy’s recent report on climate change.”
“Instead, they endorse a select group of ‘authoritative science bodies,’ such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” the attorneys general wrote.
But while the IPCC is the world’s leading authority on climate science — one that produces research compiled by hundreds of scientists around the world — DOE’s report was the work of five researchers who reject the scientific consensus of climate change.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright hand-picked the five climate contrarians, known as the Climate Working Group, to produce the DOE report. The report obscures key facts about climate change, relies on outdated studies and promotes ideas at odds with the vast majority of scientific evidence. Dozens of scientists issued a 450-page rebuttal of the report, while the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine issued its own report that found climate science threatens human health.
DOE’s own internal reviewers also determined that claims in the report were “biased” and “unjustified.” Political appointees from DOE and EPA worked with the report’s authors to ensure that their work helped the Trump administration’s efforts to repeal the scientific finding behind most federal climate regulations, as POLITICO’s E&E News has reported.
Now Florida is using the DOE report to argue that cities and countries are overspending on climate programs, and that the state should step in to limit local property taxes.
Take extreme weather, one of the most well-documented impacts of climate change. Researchers in the field of attribution science are increasingly able to fingerprint global warming’s contribution to the likelihood and magnitude of floods, droughts and extreme heat waves.
Florida is at especially high risk of climate-fueled extreme weather. The Florida DOGE report, however, disputes that.
The report repeats the Trump administration’s claim that “scientific evidence does not support claims of a long-term increase in so-called ‘extreme’ weather events, including hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, and temperature records.”
In its report, DOGE writes that “on balance,” carbon emissions and global warming “will likely be a net benefit to US agriculture.” The cost of curbing climate change, “if occurring,” would be trillions more dollars than any benefits, the report says.
In fact, rising temperatures are cutting crop yields. In Florida, extreme temperatures are increasingly impacting both crops and the workers who harvest them.
Local actions
The Florida DOGE report faults local governments for overemphasizing climate change in planning and infrastructure decisions. Palm Beach County, for instance, is singled out for emphasizing resiliency and sustainability in capital improvement projects.
“Policies Like These Have Added DEI and ESG Complexity to Every Project,” the report says, referring to the acronyms for diversity, equity and inclusion and for environmental, social and governance. ESG, which usually describes factors considered in investment decisions, has become anathema to some conservatives.
DOGE criticized Palm Beach County’s Office of Resilience for emphasizing “social equity” and singled out the county’s allocation of $1.1 million to the office last fiscal year. The resilience office addressed the “physical, social, and economic challenges of a changing climate,” including flooding and extreme heat, according to its webpage, which has been removed but remains preserved on the Internet Archive.
“To its credit,” the report says, “DOGE understands that Palm Beach County’s new county administrator has reorganized functions to eliminate the Office of Resilience.”
Palm Beach County did not respond to a request for comment.
In its report, DOGE dismisses other justifications for climate-related programs, such as the cost benefits to local governments or quality-of-life improvements for residents.
“When questioned during DOGE’s site visits, local government leaders frequently cited other justifications for climate-related projects, such as lower maintenance costs (EVs), poverty reduction (mass transit), and demand for outdoor recreational amenities,” the report says, “but DOGE’s review of public discussions, public statements, and budget justifications revealed this to be after-the-fact rationalization.”
DOGE asserts in the report that local governments had not analyzed the costs of climate policies relative to their global impact.
But it also argues such studies would be wasteful.
The report criticizes the city of Jacksonville for directing its municipal utility “to analyze the costs and benefits of converting 100% of the city’s non-emergency on-road vehicles to EVs.”
Jacksonville’s chief communications officer, Phil Perry, said in a statement to E&E News that the municipal utility, JEA, provided a fleet-conversion plan to the city at no cost.
“Many of the report’s findings are not new or hidden expenditures,” he said. “Real efficiency comes from better systems, smarter tools, and clear accountability. Notably, all budgets are a collaboration between the Mayor’s Office and City Council, and no budget passes without final approval by Council. Jacksonville remains committed to genuine collaboration with local and state partners on efforts that truly improve government performance and reduce costs.”
