The Trump administration wants to slash the budget for its renewable-energy and energy-efficiency programme by 75%, according to official US Department of Energy (DOE) documents unveiled yesterday.

President Donald Trump’s budget request for the fiscal year 2021, which begins in October, asks Congress to provide $720m for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) — a 75% reduction on the existing $2.85bn budget.

The EERE provides grants and financial assistance for renewable energy, electric vehicles and energy efficiency technologies to support its mission to “create and sustain American leadership in the transition to a global clean energy economy”.

The spending proposal, which would have to be approved by Congress, follows a similar attempt to cut the EERE budget to $696m last year. Congress responded to that request by increasing the office’s budget to $2.85bn.

Last week, House Democrats revealed that the DOE was withholding $823m of funding that had been allocated to the EERE, prompting the Natural Resources Defense Council to accuse Trump of “ideologically driven efforts that thwart action to combat climate [change]”. The president’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement and easing of Obama-era restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from cars and power plants were further examples of this agenda, the group added.

The proposed DOE 2021 budget also includes spending $546m on “Advanced Coal Energy Systems and Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS)”, $1,3bn on advancing nuclear energy, $97m in support of the Energy Storage Grand Challenge and $40m for the “Grid Storage Launchpad”, which aims to test and evaluate new advanced storage technologies.

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Trump seeks to slash funding for clean-energy technology by 75%