Trump continues clean energy assault with cancellation of $700 million in battery and manufacturing grants

United States president Donald Trump’s continued assault on clean energy has claimed a raft of new victims, including $US700 million in battery and manufacturing awards and continued uncertainty in the offshore wind sector.

Despite clean energy’s dominance in the United States’ new electrical generating capacity – not to mention renewable energy overtaking coal generation in the global electricity mix for the first time this year – Donald Trump and his administration continue to wreak havoc on the country’s clean energy industry, following through on years of anti-climate change, anti-renewable rhetoric and posturing.

The latest to feel the brunt of the administration’s wholesale attack on clean energy are a handful of battery manufacturing companies.

According to Politico’s E&E News, the US Department of Energy cancelled over $US700 million in battery and manufacturing awards that had been promised by the former Biden administration.

The five grants had been awarded to battery companies Ascend Elements, American Battery Technology Co., Anovion, and ICL Specialty Products, as well as a glass manufacturer LuxWall.

Cancelling these grants upends plans to build advanced battery manufacturing projects across the country, including Republican-won states like Kentucky and Missouri, though at least two of the companies have promised to plough ahead despite the withdrawal of promised government funding.

According to E&E News, the grants are part of a larger list of projects being targeted that has been “circulating among lobbyists” and amounts to more than $US20 billion in total.

In a statement, DoE spokesperson Ben Dietderich said that the five projects “had missed milestones, and it was determined they 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”.

That both American Battery Technology Co. and Ascend Elements are able and planning to proceed regardless of the lack of DoE funding speaks volumes about the voracity of the DoE’s claims.

The cancellation of these five grants follows hot on the heels of the DoE’s termination of approximately $US7.56 billion in financing for hundreds of energy projects that was announced at the beginning of the month.

Claiming again 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 DoE’s rationale was undermined by the fact that all the projects cancelled were in states that had been won in the most recent presidential election by former Vice President Kamala Harris.

The fact that this was announced immediately after the federal government shut down after the Republicans and Democrats failed to reach agreement on funding for the government, and was part of a broader, $US26 billion funding freeze targeted Democratic priorities, sheds further light on the real reasons for the grant cancellations.

Cancelling financing for clean energy and advanced battery manufacturing is just the latest salvo in Donald Trump’s war against renewable energy and what he describes as the “climate hoax”.

A number of renewable energy projects have already been scuppered by the Trump administration – although one, the 810 MW Empire Wind offshore wind farm off the coast of New York, which was issued the stop-work order in mid-April, earned a reprieve thanks to some deft Trump-handling by New York Governor Kathy Hochul.

The 704 MW Revolution Wind offshore wind farm also scored a get-out-of-jail-free card thanks to a federal judge, who ruled in September that Danish energy company Orsted could restart work on the wind farm, which was already 80 per cent complete. The Trump administration had previously halted construction of the project in August due to so-called “national security interests” that turned out to be fears of a risk of a “swarm drone attack”.

August also saw the Trump administration cancel a multi-billion-dollar solar program in Arizona and vacate approval of the Maryland Offshore Wind Project, which would have ended up with an eventual total capacity of over 2 gigawatts (GW).

This time it is the Department of the Interior (DoI) that is at work trying to roll back approval for the Maryland Offshore Wind Project, filing a motion in the US District Court of Maryland to remand and/or vacate approval of the project’s Construction and Operations Plan (COP).

The developer of the project, US Wind, recently claimed that if it loses its COP the company could go bankrupt.

The Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to frustrate, oppose, and cancel offshore wind energy projects is taking a toll on the industry as a whole, with a number of companies and developers rolling back plans for projects in the United States.

Jera Nex BP, a joint venture formed between Jera, Japan’s largest power generation company, and British oil and gas supermajor BP – and which was only launched in August – announced this week that it was stepping back from operations in the United States.

“Jera Nex BP has taken the difficult decision to reduce our activities in the US to a minimal level and will close our operating activities in the market,” the company said in a press release, which also confirmed all related team members will “leave the company in the coming months.”

While Jera Nex BP already boasts a portfolio of operational assets and development projects with a net potential generating capacity of 13GW and plans to build a “global pipeline while continuing to safely and efficiently operate existing assets in Europe and Asia”, its efforts in the US have run up against the Trump administration’s intransigence.

As such, one of Jera Nex BP’s projects under development, the Beacon Wind offshore project, has been shelved – although the company will maintain the lease and “wait for a more favourable moment to resume project development.”

“Unfortunately, in the present environment we see no viable path to the development of our Beacon wind project and have concluded, that we cannot continue our investment in the market,” the company said.