EDGI report shows that the DOE removed references to climate change from its BER group webpages

The Trump administration’s FY2020 budget proposes to cut funding for DOE by 10.8% (compared to FY2019 levels). Under the budget, DOE’s innovation arm — the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) — would be eliminated, and funding for its Office of Science reduced by 16.5%.

DOE officials ordered staff in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy to cancel all travel scheduled through the end of February 2019. The officials cited the partial government shutdown as the reason for requiring travel to be cancelled. However, DOE is not affected by the shutdown, having been fully-funded through the 2019 fiscal year.

The Trump administration’s FY2019 budget proposes to cut funding for DOE by 3.4% (compared to FY2017 levels). Funding for DOE’s innovation arm, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), would be eliminated and funding for its Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy cut in half.

Researchers at the National Energy Technology Laboratory were pressured, by DOE officials, to change a report on electric system reliability during extreme weather events. The changes were purportedly intended to bolster the Trump administration’s claims that retention of coal-fired power plants is vital to maintain reliability.

DOE cancelled an ongoing project researching how tropical forests will respond to climate change. The study, which involved over 130 scientists, was launched in 2015 and due to continue until 2025, but will shut down 7 years early (in 2018).

DOE-funded researchers were asked by staff at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to remove references to “climate change” and “global warming” from project descriptions.

DOE closed the Office of International Climate and Technology which was formed in 2011 to help the U.S. provide technical advice to other nations seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Trump administration’s FY2018 budget proposes a 59% cut in funding for DOE’s earth and environmental sciences program which plays a key role in federal climate change research.

DOE’s “Clean Energy Investment Center” was renamed the “Energy Investor Center” and all references to “clean energy” were removed from its website.

DOE changed its website to remove references to renewable energy as a low-emission alternative to fossil fuels and focus solely on renewable energy’s potential to create jobs.

Up to 27 DOE scientists were told they could not attend the 2017 International Atomic Energy Agency conference.

Links to various climate change resources, including the National Climate Assessment, were removed from the DOE’s main climate change website.

A supervisor in DOE’s international climate office instructed his staff not to use the terms “climate change,” “emissions reduction,” or “Paris Agreement.”

The Energy Information Administration rewrote its “Energy Kids” website to downplay the environmental impacts of burning fossil fuels. Two charts showing the link between coal burning and greenhouse gas emissions were removed.

The Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, which was a key adviser to past DOE secretaries, was reportedly “sunset.” DOE has no plans to reconstitute the board at this time.

The Trump transition team sent, then disavowed, a survey seeking information about DOE staff who had worked on climate change.

Internal DOE documents were amended to re-frame “climate change” projects as “weather” or “jobs” projects.