Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

12. Department of Energy and Related Commissions · Major · Needs Congress

Eliminate ARPA-E

Not started

385 12. Department of Energy and Related Commissions

“Eliminate ARPA-E. The next Administration should work with Congress to eliminate ARPA–E. The agency is unnecessary, risks taxpayer dollars, and interferes with risk-benefit decisions that should be made by the private sector.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    No request to abolish ARPA-E and no bill to repeal America COMPETES Act §5012. The FY2026 request proposed cutting ARPA-E from $460 million to $200 million (-57%) and the FY2027 request $200.3 million (-43%) — reductions and a refocus, not elimination; Congress appropriated $350 million for FY2026 (P.L. 119-74). ARPA-E survives the November 2025 DOE reorganization as a stand-alone office.

    No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Confirmed at not started on review, leveled with #962 and #947 against the object each Quote names. This Quote names the agency, and the agency is intact: ARPA-E is a stand-alone office on the November 2025 chart, Congress appropriated $350 million to it for FY2026, and no budget request or bill has proposed abolishing it. A request to cut an agency’s funding is not a request to eliminate it (progress is measured on this ask), so the cut proposals do not make this attempted.
  • Budget requests read as leads to a cut, not an elimination: OMB FY2026 request p. 21 (https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Fiscal-Year-2026-Discretionary-Budget-Request.pdf, “reduces funding for ARPA-E, to a fiscally responsible level”) and DOE FY2027 Budget in Brief (https://www.energy.gov/documents/doe-fy-2027-budget-brief, ARPA-E $200,292 thousand).
  • DOE’s 2025-10-01 termination of 321 awards included ARPA-E awards (see #926); award cancellations do not touch the agency’s existence.
  • Negative search: among the bills we keep and search, none contains “ARPA-E” or “Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy”; Federal Register full-text “Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy” since 2025-01-20: 1 hit (SES positions list); FY2026 Energy-Water act text: “Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy … $350,000,000”; 2025-11-20 organization chart lists ARPA-E.
Action
eliminate
Object
Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA–E)
ID
977