‘It’s bleak’: Trump prepares to gut investments to clean up heavy industry

President Donald Trump vowed to bring industrial manufacturing back to the United States. But in the coming weeks, his administration plans to gut a key program at the Department of Energy that promised to rapidly revitalize domestic production of materials such as cement, aluminum, and steel.

Slashing funding and staffing at the Energy Department’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations — and all but eliminating its Industrial Demonstrations Program (IDP) — threatens the creation of nearly 300,000 jobs nationwide, according to an analysis released by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. Of those losses, which include both construction jobs and those directly employed in manufacturing, thousands are connected to projects funded by the IDP, a separate report by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy found.

It’s unclear exactly how deep the cuts, which were initiated by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), will go. A leaked list of projects slated for cancellation that Canary Media obtained last month did not include a $500 million award to Century Aluminum to build a giant new smelter powered by carbon-free energy, suggesting that particular project might survive, even as most of the IDP’s other investments face likely termination.

The White House released a federal budget proposal last week stating that cancellations to funding under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — better known as the bipartisan infrastructure law — ​“would not impact any currently awarded projects.”

That could mean only three of the IDP’s 29 projects — the ones funded under that legislation — will be spared: Ørsted’s $100 million grant to build the Star e-Methanol facility in Texas, which will make shipping fuel from nearby industrial plants’ carbon dioxide waste; Brimstone’s $189 million project to decarbonize cement production; and a chemical refinery on the U.S. Gulf Coast where Technip Energies and LanzaTech Global plan to demonstrate a new method to produce ethanol and ethylene from low-carbon hydrogen and recycled carbon dioxide.

The remaining 26 IDP projects, which are funded through the Inflation Reduction Act, are likely on the chopping block. That includes the $500 million grant to upgrade the aging blast furnaces at steel giant Cleveland-Cliffs’ plant in Middletown, Ohio — Vice President JD Vance’s hometown.

A link to an Energy Department site listing the investments now redirects to the agency’s homepage. An agency spokesperson did not respond to Canary Media’s emailed questions.

If the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations is shuttered, Ohio stands to lose $391 million in economic activity and 2,400 jobs, the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions found. Indiana would be out $672 million and 3,246 jobs. Texas, meanwhile, would miss out on $592 million in spending and roughly 3,800 jobs.

“These are fairly conservative numbers, and it’s still very alarming in terms of the sheer scale of investment and job loss that we’re talking about,” said Brad Townsend, the Ohio-based vice president of policy and outreach at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. ​“These are the very manufacturing jobs that the administration is rightfully prioritizing. It’s inexplicable if the goal is to try to revitalize American manufacturing.”

Even if the administration reverses course and ultimately releases the money, Townsend said the dollars won’t go as far because the delay will cost companies interest.

“A good analogy here would be: If you went to your financial adviser and they said, ​‘We’re going to pull 50% of your retirement out and sit on it for the next six months or a year, and you’re not going to make any returns at the time,’ most of us would be pretty angry about that,” he said. ​“This is, in effect, what’s happening to the entire U.S. economy.”

Unlike other federal investments that are estimated to take a decade or more to pan out, IDP’s projects average a predicted completion time of 4.5 years, according to former officials at the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations and data from the leaked spreadsheets of projects. IDP was on track to distribute all its funds by September 2026.

“We told folks they needed to have shovels in the ground and be ready,” said a former IDP official who spoke to Canary Media on condition of anonymity. 

Given another six months to advance the program, the official said, ​“these projects would have gotten far enough that the new administration wouldn’t be able to unwind them.”

“The administration should be seeing this as a feather in their cap, because the program definitely aligns with their priorities,” the former official said.

The cuts appear to be the result of DOGE trouncing its rival political factions within the new administration at the Energy Department, who may have recognized the value of federal investments in industrial projects, said Hilary Lewis, the steel director at the climate advocacy nonprofit Industrious Labs.

“Who would want these plants closed? Maybe the coal industry? The coal industry isn’t lobbying for killing these projects, but they stand to benefit if we get in the way of innovation and technology improvements,” she said. ​“Practically and politically speaking, though, the group that’s trying to stop this is DOGE. They’re just trying to cut all federal funding, no matter how much good it does.”

If MAGA’s pro-development wing had hoped DOGE’s mission would wind down once its billionaire leader turned his attention back to his private-sector duties at Tesla, SpaceX, and X, the recent shakeup of top staff at the Energy Department implies otherwise. Last week, Energy Secretary Chris Wright promoted Carl Coe, who led DOGE for its first 100 days, to chief of staff.

Some projects may still survive without federal funding, even if timelines get pushed back.

IDP grant recipients with deep balance sheets and easy access to capital could fund their own projects. Exxon Mobil Corp., for example, has made the low-carbon hydrogen plant at its Baytown, Texas, refinery a key priority. Yesterday it inked a long-term supply deal to annually provide 250,000 metric tons of low-carbon ammonia to Japanese firm Marubeni. Without the nearly $332 million the IDP promised the oil giant, however, the project may take longer to complete.

But a startup such as Skyven Technologies may struggle to build the nation’s first industrial-steam-generating heat pump in Western New York without the $145 million the IDP offered.

Few states have the capacity to replace the federal funding on their own, said Archie Fraser, who leads research on decarbonization and energy efficiency for the industrial team at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

“The Industrial Demonstrations Program is a unique and exciting federal program that I think a lot of the states are not necessarily positioned to continue if the funding goes away,” he said.

Even with federal support, the U.S. has lagged far behind China in subsidizing new industrial plants. Just last year, China launched nearly twice the number of low-carbon industrial demonstration projects as the IDP funded. This year, Beijing rolled out a second batch of more than 100 new projects.

“It’s hard to overstate how much these cuts really undermine the administration’s stated mission of outcompeting China,” said Marcela Mulholland, a former official at the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations who now leads advocacy at the nonpartisan climate group Clean Tomorrow. ​“While we’re fighting about DOGE, China is barreling forward.”

She added, ​“It’s bleak.” 

Jeff St. John contributed reporting.