The U.S. Department of Energy withheld $91 million in funding for advanced research energy projects in violation of the law, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a Dec. 12 report.
At the DOE's direction, agency officials put the millions of funding on ice based on the assumption that lawmakers would adopt the Trump administration's proposal to eliminate funding for Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, for fiscal year 2018. Congress had not gutted the program for the prior fiscal year ending in September. President Donald Trump signed that spending bill into law in May.
At the request of Democratic lawmakers, the GAO probed the matter and was told by the agency's acting general counsel that the monies had been put on hold but the DOE was now making them available.
"Agencies may only withhold budget authority from obligation if the President has transmitted a special message to Congress" and Trump did not do so, which means the administration violated the Impoundment Control Act, the GAO said.
ARPA-E projects are a popular tool among utilities for advancing early stage technologies such as battery systems, advanced nuclear power reactors and biomass technologies. As of February, ARPA-E had provided about $1.5 billion in funding for more than 580 projects.
