The legal fight over the Department of Energy's clean-energy rollbacks just swung hard in favor of a group of researchers and engineers. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta vacated the agency's cancellation of 11 clean-energy grants and ordered DOE to restore roughly $82.1 million in funding. The money backs projects in New York, Oregon, Connecticut, Minnesota and Colorado that were swept up in a broad purge of awards last October. The ruling could speed up work on technologies and programs ranging from electrolyzers to building-efficiency efforts that had been stuck in limbo.
Judge’s order and who sued
According to Utility Dive, Mehta "entered judgment in favor of Plaintiffs" and made clear the decision is final and appealable. The case was brought by a coalition led by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and targeted DOE's termination of 11 specific awards. The complaint highlighted, among others, a $49.8 million award to AIChE and a $6.1 million award to Proton Energy Systems, and said the cancellations caused both economic and non-economic harm, including lost funding, missed opportunities and reputational damage.
Scope of DOE’s October cuts
On Oct. 1, 2025, the Energy Department announced that it had terminated 321 financial awards tied to 223 projects, a move the agency said produced roughly $7.56 billion in savings for taxpayers. Energy Department materials state that those cancellations followed individualized reviews of the projects. Many of the disputed awards came out of the agency's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which DOE later folded into its new Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation as part of a November 2025 reorganization, according to Energy.gov.
Plaintiffs’ evidence and claims
The suing organizations argued that the October terminations were not just about money or efficiency, but about partisan targeting. They claimed projects in states that voted for Vice President Kamala Harris were singled out, and they backed that up with internal agency communications and social media posts included in the record, according to Utility Dive. Their lawsuit asked the court to restore the awards and to grant compensation for the harms to the organizations and their research partners. Mehta's order wipes out DOE's termination notices for the 11 awards before him and leaves room for additional legal briefing on whether broader relief is warranted.
What comes next
The judgment can be appealed, and DOE may decide to seek review, while plaintiffs could try to build on the win and ask for wider injunctions that would bar political considerations in future grant decisions. A separate ruling Mehta issued in January that vacated termination notices for seven other awards, returning nearly $27.6 million to those plaintiffs, showed how narrow, award-by-award challenges can still force reinstatements and fresh procedural scrutiny. E&E News reported on that earlier decision, which provided important context for the latest ruling. DOE has said it disagrees with the courts' findings and continues to stand behind its review process, while advocates argue the decisions could help jump-start delayed projects.
For now, Mehta's order restores funding only for the specific grants at issue in this case. Even so, it tightens legal and political focus on how federal energy awards are evaluated and cut. More motions and, potentially, appeals are likely to follow, deciding whether this remains a narrow course correction for a handful of projects or becomes a turning point in how DOE handles previously obligated funding.
