Significant Reductions at the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations

In its November 2025 reorganization, the Department of Energy (DOE) effectively eliminated the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED). DOE's November 20, 2025 reorganization announcement named no offices, but OCED was not present in the accompanying organizational chart. A department spokesperson told The Hill that the new Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation would "take on pieces of" OCED and that the realignment would not result in staff reductions — months after DOE had already cut OCED's staff from 285 employees to about 40 between January and June 2025, according to a Government Accountability Office report, and weeks after OCED employees received reduction-in-force notices during the October 2025 government shutdown. The GAO report found that as a result of the staffing cuts, the agency had no effective plan in place to administer the grant money Congress had appropriated for OCED. Democratic members of Congress challenged the elimination as illegal, noting that Congress established the office by statute in 2021, so that eliminating it would require a change in legislation.