DOE Secretary Defends Cuts to National Labs while Suggesting Future Boost

Energy Secretary Chris Wright defended the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to the national lab system in a hearing Wednesday, but also said he was “very open” to expanding the budget for the national labs from the current request. Senators from both parties on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee expressed concern about the administration’s plan to cut Department of Energy programs.

Ranking Member Martin Heinrich (D-NM) said in the hearing that the budget request would cut funding for the national labs by $2.75 billion. Wright replied that the budget for individual labs has not yet been allocated, but also insisted that cuts are necessary. “This budget, unfortunately, comes from the tough world we’re in today, where we, the American taxpayers, pay $1 of tax and the federal government spends $1.30,” he said.

“My goal is to grow, not shrink, the output of top-quality science in our labs,” Wright added, “but do we need to be a little wiser and get the political science, not the real science, out of labs, and do we need to be a little bit more efficient running labs? We do.”

Heinrich said engineers at Sandia National Lab have told him the budget would significantly affect research areas and facilities for computing, fusion, advanced materials, and more, as well as potentially expose DOE to fines under a consent agreement with the New Mexico Environment Department.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said she had visited with several national lab directors who expressed concerns about potential reductions in force eliminating employees who are “doing really extraordinary things” and are “maybe not the easiest to replace.”

Murkowski also expressed interest in the national labs offering technical assistance to local communities, such as the National Renewable Energy Lab’s work with the Cold Climate Housing Research Center, and asked if there was space in the national labs’ budget for them to continue similar work.

“I’ve been voicing that AI is moving very fast. Right now, quantum computing is about to arrive, and fusion energy, I think, is going to come to pass. And this is a time to lean in as much as we can on these large scientific efforts. And so I am keen, actually, to grow the budget for our national labs in those key areas,” Wright said.

Chair Mike Lee (R-UT) asked Wright about how the department could speed up the development and deployment of nuclear energy, referencing the four executive orders on nuclear energy that President Donald Trump signed on May 23. Wright said the administration wants to have reactors reach criticality at Idaho National Lab within the next 12 months. Separately on Wednesday, DOE began soliciting applications from reactor companies interested in constructing and operating test reactors outside of the national labs.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) asked Wright when an ongoing review of the national labs’ security policies is expected to be completed. Cotton and Lee have introduced legislation that would ban foreign scientists from “adversarial countries” such as Russia, China, and Iran from accessing the labs.

Wright said only that the review is in progress. “You raised a very real concern. I stressed it to the lab directors, I think they get it too,” he said. “We’re trying to balance not stopping scientific research, but erring on the side of caution. These are national gems, and these countries of concern have clearly shown zero scruples to steal everything we have.”

Other basic research at DOE

Regarding the 57% cut to ARPA-E in DOE’s budget request, Wright said the administration wants to keep ARPA-E, but it had “grown fast and wild, and it backed a number of great projects and maybe a lot of more politically motivated, not technically motivated, projects. So it’s going to be sizable and meaningful,” he said.

Wright also said the Office of Fossil Energy, formerly the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, would see new funding for research alongside cuts to greenhouse gas removal efforts. Wright criticized the Biden administration’s calculations of the social cost of carbon as “crazy” and “torturous math,” using the RCP8.5 climate scenario that he said has been “widely dismissed as completely implausible.” The researchers who developed RCP8.5 have said it was intended as a worst-case scenario with very high baseline emissions and no mitigating climate policies enacted.

“They stretched it up to $100 for the social cost of a ton of carbon. So if that’s the negative impact, should we spend $300 to reduce a cost that maybe is $100?” Wright said. “Clearly, that math just doesn’t add up. The department will continue to support technologies and maybe find better ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is a real issue, but we should be credible about it, and not just throwing money out at it.”

Award review ongoing

Lawmakers also expressed mixed reactions to Wright’s review process for 179 awards that Wright has said were “rushed out the door, particularly in the final days of the Biden administration.” Republicans praised the review as due diligence while Democrats criticized it as politically driven.

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) said the funds were slowed down by the Biden administration’s due diligence, not “rushed out at the last minute” to avoid it. “We had been anxious and pushing the administration for years to move on some of these projects,” Padilla added.

Heinrich asked Wright why he added political appointees to serve on review boards, saying that, in previous administrations, those boards were composed entirely of career staff, with only the final sign-offs coming from political appointees.

Wright said he was “pretty confident” that previous review boards operated the same way and that the current review system was “vastly more professional and vastly less political” than those of the previous administration.

“The political appointees that are in it are people I chose. They’re business leaders, they’re entrepreneurs. They’re on the political team we came in, but… they’re playing a business role,” Wright said. “You should see how we do things today, and I can show you how things were done before. The change in professionalism — not political, professional business evaluation — is dramatic.”