The Department of Energy has confirmed it is cancelling $720 million worth of manufacturing grants. The cuts affect companies that make battery materials, recycle lithium-ion batteries, and manufacture super-insulating windows.
The money for the grants were authorized by Congress as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that was passed in 2021. The bulk of the money was awarded in 2023 and 2024, and the Trump administration had used grants awarded between Election Day and Inauguration Day as justification for canceling awards.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright has been combing through contracts made during the Biden administration. The DOE claimed that the projects “missed milestones” and “did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs.”
READ: Apple’s former CEO John Sculley calls OpenAI ‘Apple’s first real competitor in decades’ (
According to DOE, the $720 million covers grants that the Biden administration awarded to battery companies Ascend Elements, American Battery Technology Co., Anovion and ICL Specialty Products, as well as a glass manufacturer LuxWall.
Ascend Elements has been refining a recycling technology that could turn manufacturing waste and end-of-life batteries into materials required to make lithium-ion batteries domestically. This company had awarded $316 million toward a $1 billion facility in Kentucky in October 2022.
$206 million has already been disbursed to Ascend Elements, according to federal government records. The company said it was moving ahead with its plans using other sources of funding to make up for any shortfall.
Another company, Anovion, was awarded $117 million to reshore a technology to produce synthetic graphite for lithium-ion batteries anodes. Chinese suppliers control 75% of the supply chain for synthetic graphite and produce 97% of all synthetic graphite anodes, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. The startup’s plant is expected to be built in Alabama, and only $13.8 million has been disbursed till date, according to a federal database.
The DOE had awarded LuxWall — a company that makes windows that insulate buildings as well as solid walls — $31.7 million to build a factory on the site of an old coal plant near Detroit. This was granted in November 2023, though only $1 million has been sent to the company, according to government records. LuxWall opened the first phase of its factory in August 2024.
It’s not clear whether DOE intends to move forward with other cancellations on the $20 billion list.
After the announcement of $7.56 billion in funding cuts, Wright told CNN there would be “many more” cancellations this fall. These cancellations have been criticized by Democrats, and some Republicans have been prompted to pressure DOE to save projects in their states. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, for instance, has said that funding for a “blue” hydrogen project in Appalachia that would use natural gas and carbon capture should not be eliminated.