The Trump Administration Is Cutting Billions in Clean Energy Investments—But the Savings Are Overstated

Data and R code to reproduce the analysis underlying this Oct. 10, 2025 Inside Climate News article, analyzing data from USAspending for grants terminated by the Department of Energy on Oct. 2, plus a wider leaked list of grants targeted for termination.

Contains the following folders and files

data_processing.R Script used to pull data on these grants from the USAspending API and to perform the analysis reported in the article.

data_processing.RData Data derived from running that script.

data Folder containing two files identifying grants terminated by the DOE under its Oct. 2 announcement and a wider list circulated in the subsequent week.

processed_data Folder containing the following files:

• doe_targeted_grants.csv Data from USASpending for the targeted grants. Key fields include:

  • award_id Unique identifier for the grant at USAspending.

  • recipient_name Name of recipient organization.

  • description Brief description of the grant.

  • award_amount Currently obligated federal spending.

  • total_outlays Funding recorded as having already been transferred to the recipient organization. Note: There may be lags in this information appearing in USAspending, so the true outlays may be higher in some cases.

  • potential_cut Calculated field (award_amount - total_outlays) showing money still to be transferred to the recipient, used for our estimates of potential savings.

  • end_date The end of the period of performance for the grant. For our analyses of potential cuts/savings, we excluded grants with end dates before the start of the 2026 Fiscal Year and the government shutdown on Oct. 1.

  • in_round1 Logical field, TRUE if the grant is on the list of those covered by the Oct. 2 DOE termination announcement.

  • past_end_date Logical field, TRUE if end_date was before Oct. 1, 2025.

  • end_date_pre_trump Logical field, TRUE if end_date was before Donald Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025.

• summary_state_recipient.csv Analysis of potential cuts from the termination of these grants by state of the recipient organization, used for the graphic published in the article.

Questions/Feedback

Email Peter Aldhous.