AMHERST — Federal grants totaling $466 million for energy projects in Massachusetts, including money for the University of Massachusetts and businesses in Northampton and Holyoke, are being canceled by the Trump administration.
Gov. Maura Healey announced Thursday that her office had received notice of the termination of 223 grants totaling $7.5 billion nationwide in support of cutting-edge research and product development. The decisions are apparently motivated largely by whether the state where the private companies, universities and nonprofits are located voted for Trump or Democratic nominee, then Vice President Kamala Harris, in 2024, and the position of the U.S. senators on the ongoing government shutdown.
“President Trump is further weaponizing his government shutdown to cost people jobs and hurt our economy,” Healey said late last week. “Today, he’s cutting nearly half a billion dollars for our businesses, universities and nonprofits that are working on cutting-edge technologies to lower energy costs, create good jobs and build a more reliable grid. All of our residents will be harmed by this vindictive action. We need the Trump Administration to restore this funding and reopen our government.”
Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Ed Markey also wrote a letter, signed onto by the entire Massachusetts Congressional delegation, seeking to get more details about what the cancellations mean for projects with ongoing work, open reimbursement requests and other activities.
“These terminations will hamstring American competitiveness, drive up energy costs, and hurt domestic manufacturing. And it will undermine investments in American innovation for years to come — ceding ground to China and other nations that understand the merit of technological development and investment,” they wrote.
“And this is yet another action that the Trump administration is taking that will push electricity bills even higher,” the lawmakers wrote.
While Healey’s office provided a list showing that close to 30 Massachusetts-based entities would be losing federal support, a more detailed compilation was put out by Democrats on the Appropriations Committee.
Several grants for local projects are on the list, including a $3.6 million grant to UMass, a $1.07 million grant for Saint-Gobain Ceramics & Plastics, which has a site on Industrial Drive in Northampton, and an $87 million grant to Sublime Systems for a low-carbon cement manufacturing plant to open in Holyoke in 2028 — though Trump had previously announced the termination of that Sublime grant in June.
UMass spokeswoman Emily Gest issued a statement about the nature of the grant that may be eliminated.
“While we have not yet received official notification, we are aware that funding for the Academic Center for Reliability and Resilience of Offshore Wind (ARROW), a multimillion-dollar national research center to develop offshore wind energy sources comprised of eight universities, three national laboratories, two state-level energy offices and many industry and stakeholder groups in the state as well as Illinois, Maryland, Washington, South Carolina and Puerto Rico, may be terminated by the U.S. Department of Energy,” Gest said.
Saint-Gobain Ceramics & Plastics describes itself as a leader in light and sustainable construction that manufactures and distributes materials and services for the construction and industrial markets.
In a post titled “Republican Shutdown: Trump and Vought Raise Energy Prices,” the Democrats criticized Office of Management Budget Director Russ Vought for making the announcement on behalf of the Department of Energy.
“The termination of these critical energy projects will increase energy prices, eliminate jobs and make the energy grid less reliable,” they said in a statement. “Vought canceled these projects despite the fact that DOE currently remains open and fully operational using unexpired financial resources.”
Vought, though, posted on social media that the money being stripped was part of “Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda.”
Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said the decision is about protecting taxpayer dollars and expanding America’s supply of affordable, reliable and secure energy.
“On day one, the Energy Department began the critical task of reviewing billions of dollars in financial awards, many rushed through in the final months of the Biden administration with inadequate documentation by any reasonable business standard,” Wright said.
Like the federal lawmakers, Healey was also critical that these cuts undermine efforts to lower energy prices. Impacted projects were focused on bringing new energy supply into the grid, which is needed to lower costs for businesses and families, such as National Grid’s federally funded Future Grid Project.
She also cautioned that the cuts to Massachusetts will also affect subgrantees and company partners in other states like Ohio, Georgia and Texas, and would hurt the United States’ competitiveness in hydrogen and conductive material technologies, giving more leverage to China and other countries.