The Senate’s recent decision to end earmarks for projects funded by the Department of Energy followed years of declining demand from lawmakers and nonprofits, who have experienced delays and other bureaucratic challenges in getting the money members of Congress worked to secure.
The difficulties ultimately tainted the DOE account among lawmakers and prospective recipients, according to current and former congressional aides. Senator requests for DOE-funded earmarks dropped 55 percent over the past four years, prompting top appropriators to scrap them altogether.
People who have handled DOE-earmarked projects describe delays of months or even years in getting the funding lawmakers secured in recent Energy-Water spending bills. Stringent cost-sharing requirements and long-running negotiations over the scope of awarded projects have sometimes exacerbated those delays.
“It’s a really difficult account to make work,” said a former Senate aide familiar with the dynamics, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
“The committee was hesitant to pull it down,” the former aide said. “But it’s been under discussion for years.”
Last month, Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) removed DOE’s “Energy Projects” account from the list of available funding buckets for fiscal 2027. The House had already barred members from earmarking DOE funds.
The bipartisan move to remove DOE earmarks from eligibility in the next Energy-Water spending bill underscores the severity of the problems plaguing the department’s execution of congressionally directed spending requests, and it effectively eliminates a relatively small — but not inconsequential — source of federal funding that has supported a range of energy projects in recent years.
The failure of the “Energy Projects” earmarks account means dozens of nonprofits and universities across the country are no longer eligible for the tens of millions of dollars a year that would otherwise go toward projects ranging from fossil energy and carbon dioxide management initiatives to renewable energy development and cybersecurity.
Appropriators and other senators on both sides of the aisle enjoyed being able to request DOE funds for energy projects in their home states. But the challenges associated with actually getting the money from the agency were at times too burdensome.
Of the 259 projects across the country that won DOE earmarks between fiscal 2022 and fiscal 2024, about 25 percent still have not received the money, according to a current Senate aide with knowledge of the account.
Those delays, cost-sharing rules and disputes over the nature of certain projects have led 10 percent of would-be recipients to ultimately decline the funding their senators had secured.
The issues with DOE earmarks have persisted since Congress reinstated the practice of earmarking in 2021. The departure of some of the department’s workforce in the past year, the agency’s recent reorganization, and the shift in priorities between the Biden and Trump administrations may also be playing a role in the holdups.
DOE spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment.
“I don’t think … it’s any ill will or bad intent on the part of the agencies [or] disbursers,” said another former congressional aide who worked on appropriations and now does energy consulting. “I just think that a lot of the time, it’s lower priority, especially for this administration.”
The former aide said one of his firm’s current clients is still waiting on earmarked funding they won in the fiscal 2024 appropriations cycle.
Some of the delays at DOE have stemmed from the nature or scope of certain earmarks. Energy technology projects eligible for funding “had to be super-, super-nascent,” said the former Senate aide. “DOE hated administering these [awards].”
Additionally, DOE may be lacking the kind of structural organization needed to process tens of millions of dollars’ worth of earmarks. Whereas most EPA earmarks draw from existing grantmaking programs such as state and tribal assistance grants, DOE’s earmarks pull from a broader “Energy Projects” account that stretches across agency bureaus.
“At DOE, they don’t have a process and this does not fit into an existing program per se,” said the former Senate aide. “It was just very difficult and hard for nonprofits.”
The Appropriations committees’ processes for establishing earmarks guidance and selecting final awards is bipartisan and driven largely by lawmaker demand. It’s not uncommon for some accounts to be made ineligible or for them to return to eligibility at a later time.
The offices of Collins and Murray declined to comment for this story.
Both Republican and Democratic senators have benefited from earmarks under DOE’s “Energy Projects” account. They secured nearly $100 million in DOE awards in the fiscal 2026 Energy-Water bill that became law in January.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a senior appropriator, secured the largest DOE earmark in that law: an $8 million award to Clemson University for fusion energy materials. He received a separate $6 million earmark for battery recycling research at the University of South Carolina.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) received $5 million for the Center for Clean Hydrogen at the University of Delaware. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) won $840,000 for geothermal exploration.
The current status of those recent awards — and dozens of others — is unclear.
