US terminates CCS and decarbonisation projects worth $3.7bn
Power Engineering International
Posted on: 2 June 2025
US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright announced the termination of 24 awards issued by the OCED totaling over $3.7 billion financial assistance.
US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright announced the termination of 24 awards issued by the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) totaling over $3.7 billion financial assistance.
Of the 24 awards cancelled, 16 were signed between Election Day and January 20th.
The projects primarily include funding for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and decarbonization initiatives. The US Department of Energy (DOE) said it concluded the projects “failed to advance the energy needs of the American people, were not economically viable, and would not generate a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.”
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Although DOE did not specify which projects were affected, Bloomberg reports that they include $331 allocated to Exxon Mobil for a hydrogen project at its Baytown, Texas refinery; $170 million to Kraft Heinz for several clean energy developments; $500 million to Heidelberg Materials for a low-carbon cement project; $375 million to Eastman Chemical for its molecular recycling facility in Longview, Texas; and $270 million to Calpine subsidiaries for carbon capture projects in Baytown, Texas, and near Yuba City, California.
“While the previous administration failed to conduct a thorough financial review before signing away billions of taxpayer dollars, the Trump administration is doing our due diligence to ensure we are utilizing taxpayer dollars to strengthen our national security, bolster affordable, reliable energy sources and advance projects that generate the highest possible return on investment,” said secretary Wright. “Today, we are acting in the best interest of the American people by cancelling these 24 awards.”
Earlier this month, DOE issued a Secretarial Memorandum entitled, “Ensuring Responsibility for Financial Assistance,” which outlined DOE’s policy for evaluating financial assistance on a case-by-case basis. DOE said it utilized this review process to evaluate each of these 24 awards and determined that they did not meet the economic, national security or energy security standards necessary to sustain DOE’s investment.
Originally published by Sean Wolfe on Factor This.
