Trump’s DOE Swings At Clean Energy & Accidentally Hits A Bullseye

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Last Updated on: 29th March 2025, 05:29 pm

In a move that surprised absolutely no one, the Trump/Wright Department of Energy began swinging the axe at clean energy programs—but here’s the twist: this time, they might accidentally be getting a few things right. Not because they’ve suddenly developed a coherent decarbonization strategy or found religion on climate policy. No, their motivations are transparently petty and political—punish Democratic states, reallocate billions to fund tax cuts for billionaires, and sprinkle some red-state favoritism over the ashes. But amid the smoke and mirrors, some of these cuts to hydrogen hubs and carbon capture projects—particularly the ones targeting hydrogen for transportation—make more sense than anyone in this administration probably realizes.

Let’s start with the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Association. The DOE had earmarked around $1 billion for this project, which is grounded in electrolytic hydrogen produced using renewables. Their focus? The initiative aimed to decarbonize hard-to-electrify sectors such as heavy-duty transportation, agriculture, and industrial operations, including fertilizer and cement production. Mostly energy use cases with a side helping of ammonia fertilizer, the only value proposition there. I won’t mourn this hub.

Then there’s California’s ARCHES hub. Price tag: $1.5 billion. This one leans heavily on hydrogen for transportation. Public buses, fuel cell trucks, maybe the occasional misguided hydrogen train. It’s a classic case of California trying to wish hydrogen cars into existence like it’s still 2003. The problem? Physics called, and it wants its efficiency back. When you run hydrogen through electrolysis, compress it, transport it, and convert it back to electricity in a vehicle, you’ve thrown away about two-thirds of the original energy. Batteries beat this circus act in every metric that matters. Cutting funding here? Accidentally brilliant, and I hope they follow through.

Next up: the Midwest Regional hub spanning Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. Budgeted at up to $1.3 billion, this project blends industrial and transport applications, with hydrogen expected to come from a mix of nuclear, renewables, and natural gas paired with carbon capture. Both the transportation and the blue hydrogen are big red flags, not to mention diverting existing nuclear generation away from better use cases. If this hub refocused entirely on industrial use with green hydrogen, we might have a conversation. As is, it’s a “no” from me. Cut away.

The Mid-Atlantic hub—covering Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey—wants to spend $1.2 billion to develop new hydrogen pipelines, construct truck-loading facilities, and use hydrogen trailers to connect producers and end-users. Targeted applications include transportation sectors such as trucks, buses, and sanitation vehicles, as well as industrial heat and power generation. Lots of hydrogen for energy use cases with a side order of wasting existing nuclear electrons. This is a feel-good initiative that ignores basic thermodynamics. Turning off the tap here makes sense, no matter how warped the underlying motive.

The three hydrogen hubs apparently being spared the budgetary axe—HyVelocity in Texas and Louisiana, the Appalachian hub covering Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia, and the Heartland hub spanning the Dakotas and Minnesota—are conveniently nestled in Republican strongholds. Their continued funding has less to do with technical merit and more with electoral maps and donor gratitude. These projects aren’t fundamentally better; they just happen to sit in zip codes the current administration likes. If politics weren’t at play, at least one of these would be under the axe too.

I assessed a couple of iterations of the Biden DOE’s hydrogen strategy over the past few years. The last one showed some improvement over its predecessor but remained fundamentally flawed, primarily serving the interests of the fossil fuel industry. The strategy continued to misdiagnose hydrogen’s role, promoting its use across transportation and industrial heating sectors where more efficient and cost-effective electrification alternatives exist. Notably, the inclusion of hydrogen for temperatures above 300°C overlooks existing electric solutions capable of reaching up to 3,000°C. Furthermore, the strategy’s advocacy for hydrogen in commercial and residential heating is misguided, given the proven superiority of heat pumps in terms of safety and economics.

A significant concern was the strategy’s continued emphasis on producing hydrogen from fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage. This approach predominantly benefits the fossil fuel sector, as most CCS applications in the U.S. are tied to enhanced oil recovery—a practice incompatible with genuine climate solutions. The strategy’s shortcomings stem from its development within the DOE, heavily influenced by fossil fuel interests, and lacking substantial input from sectors that are the primary consumers of hydrogen today, such as the ammonia industry for fertilizer production.

The strategy’s missteps were in large part forced upon it by Congress assigning it to the energy guys instead of the commerce guys who deal with industry, and then requiring that hydrogen be made from coal and gas, and requiring the prioritization of reuse of fossil fuel infrastructure. No wonder it got things as wrong as it did the first time, and didn’t get to reality in the update. The strategy’s flaws were mirrored in the hydrogen hubs, hence the reason none of them make a lot of sense.

Now shift gears to carbon capture and storage, that perennial darling of the fossil fuel industry. First up: Project Cypress in Louisiana, a $550 million venture aimed at capturing CO₂ from hydrogen production facilities and piping it 30 miles to underground storage. But let’s not get too misty-eyed—this isn’t green hydrogen from renewables. It’s blue hydrogen, birthed from natural gas with a carbon capture band-aid slapped on. And that gas? It leaks like a sieve. The U.S. oil and gas sector spews methane across the landscape, and with methane’s global warming potential more than 80 times that of CO₂ over 20 years, the climate math starts looking bleak fast. CCS on the back end can’t fix the upstream hemorrhaging. While this project may look respectable on paper, it still smells like a swamp gas. Canceling it isn’t shooting yourself in the foot—it might just be avoiding a long, slow amputation.

Then there’s the South Texas Direct Air Capture hub. Half a billion dollars to suck CO₂ from ambient air and send it down 50-plus miles of pipeline to storage. That’s a thermodynamic nightmare that drinks energy like a dehydrated camel at an oasis. Direct air capture might one day help mop up residual emissions, but it’s nowhere near ready for prime time. Maybe in 2050. Spending hundreds of millions now is like ordering champagne for a party that hasn’t even been scheduled yet. If Wright and company want to cancel this one to save money for Gulfstream jet fuel subsidies, well—let them. The outcome is still better than the alternative.

In the end, this is a masterclass in stumbling backward into good decisions. Yes, the administration is gutting clean energy for all the wrong reasons. Yes, it’s disproportionately targeting blue states. But if you squint past the political pettiness, most of these proposed cancellations align with what energy modelers, physicists, and anyone who’s ever heard of the second law of thermodynamics have been saying for years: hydrogen for energy is a boondoggle, and CCS only makes sense in very narrow, industrial use cases.

It’s not leadership. It’s not strategy. It’s more of the Trump administration blundering around the china shop of energy, governance, and diplomacy like a bull on crystal meth. But in a few isolated cases, it’s the right call. That probably means they won’t follow through.