Colorado will lose $550 million in funding to research climate change, part of $7.56 billion in cuts announced Thursday by the U.S. Department of Energy, with the largest reduction at Colorado State University.
CSU will lose a $326 million grant announced in January by the outgoing Biden Administration to research methods to reduce methane emission from oil and gas wells. Other cuts will affect the University of Colorado Boulder, the Colorado School of Mines, the Rocky Mountain Institute, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association Inc. and other groups.
A list compiled by Congressional Democrats lists also includes private companies in the Boulder Valley and Northern Colorado that face cuts, including:
- AMP Robotics Corp, Louisville, $5,930,148.
- Czero Inc., Fort Collins, $2,504,167.
- RCAM Technologies, now known as Sperra, Boulder, $2 million.
- United Power Inc., Brighton, $6,124,821.
DOE is terminating funding for 223 projects nationwide, including in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state.
Colorado political and governmental leaders decried the cuts, which mostly affect Democrat-run states.
“The cancellation of this funding for political vengeance is blatantly illegal,” Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper said in a statement. “Congress approved this funding to create jobs and to generate cleaner, cheaper power.
“Even if for some dark reason you are against cleaner energy, these projects are well underway. To abandon them now wastes the funds already invested, and needlessly cripples dozens of honest, hard-working small businesses that believed having a legal contract with our country meant something. The White House strategy during their shutdown is to punish Americans who dared to vote against them.”
A press release from the Energy Department said that after “a thorough, individualized financial review, DOE determined that these projects did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs, were not economically viable, and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.”
The awards were issued by various DOE offices.
“On day one, the Energy Department began the critical task of reviewing billions of dollars in financial awards, many rushed through in the final months of the Biden administration with inadequate documentation by any reasonable business standard,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright, founder of Denver-based Liberty Energy Inc., said in a statement.
DOE noted that 26% of the grants, valued at $3.1 billion, were awarded in a lame-duck Biden Administration, between Election Day and Inauguration Day.
Award recipients have 30 days to appeal a termination decision, and DOE said that some have already begun that process.
You can see BizWest's reporting on regional officials' reactions to the funding cuts here.
