Judge Restores 11 Canceled Blue State Clean Energy Grants
A coalition of groups spearheaded by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers has prevailed in a lawsuit against the Department of Energy (DOE) and Secretary Chris Wright over cancellation of 11 clean energy project grants.
The grantees, located in Connecticut, New York, Oregon, Minnesota, and Colorado, were targeted because Kamala Harris won those states in the 2024 presidential election, according to the judge in the case. In a June 11 stipulated judgment, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta restored $82.1 million in grants.
The 11 grants are a fraction of the 321 canceled by DOE last October, valued at $7.5 billion. The Associated Press (AP) reported that canceled grants were in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington state. A majority of voters in all 16 targeted states supported Harris.
The plaintiffs claimed the cancellations were politically motivated and violated the equal protection clause of the Fifth Amendment. The initial complaint also cited a post on X by Russell Vought, director of the US Office of Management and Budget (OMB), stating, “Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being canceled.” Vought and OMB were also defendants in the suit.
“A primary reason for the selection of which DOE grant termination decisions were included in the October 2025 notice tranche was whether the grantee was located in a ‘Blue State,’” Mehta wrote in his stipulated judgment. For the purposes of the current litigation only, he noted, DOE agreed not to contest that fact.
Mehta also referred to a January settlement agreement in a similar case, brought by the City of St. Paul, Minnesota, in which $27.6 million was restored for seven projects. He also heard that case, writing in his decision: “Defendants freely admit that they made grant-termination decisions primarily — if not exclusively — based on whether the awardee resided in a state whose citizens voted for President Trump in 2024.” Other cases are still pending.
Energy industry media reported that Secretary of Energy Wright continued to deny the allegations in a June 10 congressional committee hearing. “We did not involve politics in the decision-making of our review process. Hands down,” Wright said. “I keep hearing that charge. It’s bulls---t, we’re going to say it a million times.”
Administration Cancels Wind Projects Through Lease Buybacks
Meanwhile, AP has reported that the administration has been pursuing continuing efforts to stop offshore wind farms that President Donald Trump does not support, and to redirect the money to fossil fuel projects that he does. “It adopted this strategy after federal courts thwarted Trump’s efforts to stop offshore wind development through executive action,” the June 17 AP article reported.
Under the buyback program, the federal government pays holders of offshore wind leases if they agree to cancel the projects and reinvest the funds in fossil fuel projects. The most recent buyback, reported on June 17, involved four projects off the coasts of Maine and California. In exchange for repayment of $765 million in leasing fees, the developer, Chicago-based Invenergy, will reinvest in natural gas and geothermal projects.
That reportedly brings the total spent to date on the buybacks to $2.6 billion. Invenergy had already canceled projects off the New Jersey coast under similar arrangements. In March, the French company TotalEnergies was reported to be getting nearly $1 billion to cancel their wind projects off the coasts of New York and North Carolina, in exchange for reinvesting in fossil fuels.
In April, Golden State Wind canceled a project off the central coast of California, and Bluepoint Wind canceled projects off the coasts of New York and New Jersey. AP reported that the companies received a combined $900 million in exchange for obligations to reinvest the funds in fossil fuel projects.
