President Donald Trump’s energy policy in his first month in office often was a seeming victory for Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation policy blueprint calling for slashing federal regulations and climate programs.
The Department of Energy is being downsized. Liquefied natural gas exports are being pushed forward. Spending on clean energy projects is under review.
But some of the most transformational recommendations of the document for DOE, such as eliminating entire program offices and renaming the department, have not been floated, at least not yet.
That raises the question how influential Project 2025 — or the wing of the Republican Party that aligns with its philosophy — is with DOE policy. In the end, will Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, Trump’s budget chief and an architect of Project 2025, get his way over energy officials with a different view?
“This represents one early test of just how centralized the second Trump administration will be in overseeing actions of Cabinet secretaries, including [the Department of] Energy. We would normally expect a central role on issues like this for the Energy secretary but this now confronts an OMB head who clearly has a very expansive sense of his role and that of his office,” said Barry Rabe, professor emeritus of environmental policy at the University of Michigan.
The 900-plus-page Project 2025 was published in 2023 and organized by Heritage, a conservative think tank. Vought was an architect of the plan, and the energy chapter was written by Bernard McNamee, a former DOE official appointed to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Trump’s first term. McNamee and the Heritage Foundation did not respond to requests for comment.
The document has more than 100 recommendations for DOE, including renaming it to the “Department of Energy Security and Advanced Science.” In DOE’s fossil office, Trump administration proposals so far parallel roughly half of Project 2025’s seven suggestions, according to a review by POLITICO’s E&E News.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s nine-point plan for DOE policy also echoes Project 2025 in calling for advancing LNG projects, refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, reviewing efficiency standards and modernizing the nation’s nuclear stockpile. Wright’s criticism of net-zero policies is similar to Project 2025’s claim that addressing climate change raises energy costs, an argument challenged by environmentalists. Wright pushed for “basic science” in his first secretarial order, an echo of the Heritage framework’s emphasis on moving DOE toward “fundamental science.”
DOE declined to comment.
Trump said during the presidential campaign last year that he hadn’t read the Heritage plan, but some of its language appeared nearly verbatim in his energy executive orders.
At DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which is key for regulations and clean energy spending, current policies mirror less than half of Project 2025’s five recommendations. But DOE observers say that could change in the next few months when Trump releases his budget request. One of the Project 2025 recommendations, for instance, calls for large cuts in EERE funding, which Trump repeatedly proposed in his first term.
In other cases, DOE policy is similar to Project 2025 suggestions, even if it’s not tracking a full recommendation. As one example, Wright is not currently calling for eliminating efficiency standards, but he has repeatedly criticized existing rules for appliances as DOE undertakes a review of the whole program.
“These are just nonsensical things that have hurt people’s lives,” he said at CPAC last week about efficiency rules after railing against Biden standards for dishwashers, clothes dryers and gas water heaters.
DOE has perhaps most mirrored the Heritage blueprint in its fossil office, where existing proposals echo Project 2025 on pursuing development of critical minerals, along with advancing LNG export approvals and maintaining the petroleum reserve.
“It’s undeniable that a lot of the things in Project 2025 are consistent with what [Trump] has been promising on the campaign trail,” said Tom Pyle, president of the conservative think tank Institute for Energy Research and leader of Trump’s 2016 DOE transition team. If Project 2025 is similar to administration policy, it’s because the document reflects policies that have been “conservative priorities for a long time,” not officials going through a Heritage document, he said.
Federico Holm, a clean energy policy analyst with the left-leaning research organization Center for Progressive Reform, said he thought Trump would go much further in trying to slash DOE programs than he did in his first term, considering the pace and breadth of actions on energy policy the past month, including the push for fossil fuel development and firing of DOE probationary workers. According to the organization’s tracker, three out of 21 tracked policies from Project 2025 have been implemented so far at DOE through either executive or secretarial orders.
“There’s a much stronger commitment to push the boundaries of what is feasible … in a way that wasn’t present in the first Trump administration,” Holm said.
Some DOE officials are splitting with ideas in Project 2025, however. The document calls for eliminating carbon capture programs and leaving development of the technology to the private sector, saying it remains “economically unviable.” Trump made similar arguments on his campaign website last year.
But at the Atlantic Council on Friday, DOE acting Undersecretary for Infrastructure Steve Winberg said, “The U.S. has been a leader in the development of carbon capture and sequestration, and we will continue that leadership.” He added DOE would support research on methane mitigation and turning natural gas into products such as hydrogen and plastics.
DOE also has brought back officials from Trump’s first term who advocated for carbon capture like Lou Hrkman, who was appointed as principal deputy assistant secretary this month in the renewable office. Hrkman most recently was an energy adviser to former Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.).
Wright, meanwhile, has espoused some ideas that split from Project 2025. In his written answers to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee after his confirmation hearings, he said climate change is a global challenge that “requires relentless innovation driven by cutting-edge research from DOE national laboratories.”
In an interview with Bloomberg this month, Wright indicated that uncommitted funds from the loan office would keep flowing “to advance the president’s agenda.” When asked if he would cancel loans, he said no, adding he would follow the law on awards he inherited that are “half pregnant.” Both Project 2025 and Trump in his first term called for eliminating the loan office.
Jigar Shah, the head of DOE’s loan office under former President Joe Biden, said to give Wright “a chance” in a POLITICO interview this month, arguing he knows how to attract private capital for investments. In some DOE offices, it’s also too early to tell where policy is headed, as chief leaders are not yet in place.
For many environmentalists, a chief concern is White House pressure on DOE, regardless of Wright’s views. They point to the activities of the Department of Government Efficiency and the initial firing of probationary workers overseeing DOE’s nuclear weapon arsenal as examples of a greater White House influence than in the past on DOE. Vought on Wednesday instructed agency heads to make plans for large-scale reductions in force.
Vought wrote in his chapter of Project 2025 that executive power is in the presidency, not federal departments or agencies, noted David Kieve, president of EDF Action, the advocacy arm of the Environmental Defense Fund.
Trump “seems so beholden to oil and gas interests that he’s willing to throw away good-paying jobs in clean energy,” Kieve said. “To me that’s crazy.”
In a statement, White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said: “As President Trump has said many times, he had nothing to do with Project 2025. In his first month in office, President Trump has delivered on the promises that earned him a resounding mandate from the American people — securing the border, restoring common sense, driving down inflation, and unleashing American energy.”
The ARPA-E test
A key indicator of how much Project 2025-esque ideas will prevail in DOE policy is the fate of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E. The office funds early-stage energy projects considered too risky for the private sector. Its supporters, which include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), say it has been a resounding success that spurred funding in the private sector and led to creation of hundreds of companies.
But Project 2025 and Trump in his first term called for its elimination, saying it wastes taxpayer dollars and is duplicative of other DOE efforts. Conservatives like Pyle are pushing for Trump to propose scrapping the agency again when the president releases a budget request.
Trump nominated Conner Prochaska as ARPA-E director in early February, a sharp difference from his first term when no one was named to lead the agency for more than a year. It’s unclear if Trump has changed his position on ARPA-E or is nominating someone this time around to try to dismantle or weaken the agency. Congress repeatedly rejected Trump’s requests to eliminate ARPA-E in the past. The White House did not respond to a question about ARPA-E.
Like Winberg, Prochaska is a veteran of Trump’s first term, having served as a senior adviser at ARPA-E and as DOE’s chief commercialization officer. He’s been outspoken in favor of ARPA-E, calling it a “cool cool” place in a 2023 interview on the “Oil and Gas Upstream” podcast. His views suggest Trump might treat the agency differently this time around.
In the written answer to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Wright said he would “evaluate the work of ARPA-E, which plays an important role in helping to commercialize new technologies” when asked about the agency’s future.
Jeff Navin, a co-founder of Boundary Stone Partners who worked at DOE during the Obama administration, noted the program has bipartisan support and that Trump ultimately “followed the law” in his first term after Congress appropriated funds for ARPA-E.
“I think Secretary Wright, like many Republicans in Congress, will find the relatively modest appropriations in ARPA-E as a worthwhile and valuable investment in ensuring that America’s energy dominance continues for many years to come,” said Navin. “There will be no energy dominance in the future without investment in the kinds of innovation we will need to be competitive globally on energy technology in the coming decades.”
