Probationary employees at the Department of Energy (DOE) are being let go, as the Trump administration makes broad cuts to the federal government.
Politico reports that some 2,000 of the department's more than 16,000 employees could be impacted. The layoffs follow three representatives of Elon Musk's DOGE visiting the department.
The department had grown in size under the previous administration, as the Inflation Reduction Act and bipartisan infrastructure law increased the number of renewable projects, utility partnerships, and grid activity administered by the agency.
DOE officials were made to justify the jobs of individual probationary employees in written statements of as little as 200 characters, and it is not clear how many were saved. While probationary employees, who have less than one year of federal service, are considered 'at-will,' the legality of firing them without a reason is unclear.
Among those impacted are members of the Grid Deployment Office, which looks to accelerate development of new and upgraded electric infrastructure across the country.
"These folks are well-qualified, hard-working people from communities across the US and are committed to building a better grid for all of America," DOE colleague Katie Weeks said on LinkedIn.
"If you or someone you know is looking to hire someone with deep experience in stakeholder engagement, public affairs and communications, grid modernization, energy policy and regulation, transmission planning, and permitting, or business and program operations, please let me know."
One of the employees let go said: "We’re shell-shocked. All the hard work we’ve put in over the last several months to secure our nation’s energy future is just… gone."
Also impacted is the DOE's Offshore Wind team, which has struggled since Trump banned federal leases of offshore wind, effectively ending development for all but the furthest along projects. Shell this month exited the Atlantic Shores offshore wind project, which had been set to help power New Jersey.
Similarly impacted is the DOE’s Office of General Counsel, which outgoing DOE General Counsel Sam Walsh credited for a number of critical achievements.
"Over the past two years, DOE’s Office of General Counsel hired an exceptional group of attorneys," he said. "Having interviewed them all and studied their resumes, I can say without hesitation that, as a cohort, this group was better qualified and more driven than we have ever seen. Yesterday, they were all fired. No theory of organizational management or sound cost-cutting could justify throwing away talent like that – and none was offered."
The team designed and implemented over 60 new clean energy financial assistance programs, created a new program to "significantly reduce the time it takes to permit transmission lines," and establish "new categorical exclusions under NEPA for solar, storage, and transmission upgrades," among other things, he said.
Also impacted are workers at national labs and hydroelectric plants, legacy nuclear sites, nuclear security administration employees, battery storage researchers, and the loans office. The latter program manages hundreds of billions of dollars in loans for renewable energy, nuclear, and electric vehicles.
The cuts come despite President Donald Trump declaring a "national energy emergency," and claiming that the US had to double its total power to support AI.
A letter seen by Reuters told fired employees that their "further employment would not be in the public interest."
