U.S. Energy Department Unveils Accountability Measures for Financial Assistance Programs

The U.S. Energy Department on May 15 announced new actions to increase accountability and reduce wasteful spending of U.S. taxpayers’ money. As part of the Secretarial Memorandum titled, “Ensuring Responsibility for Financial Assistance, “ the department outlined its policy for evaluating financial assistance on a per case basis to recognize inefficient utilization of U.S. taxpayers’ money, protect U.S. national security and advance U.S. President Donald Trump’s pledge to unleash secure, affordable and reliable energy for the U.S. population.

The department has begun requesting additional information required to evaluate 179 awards. The total financial assistance for these awards totaled over $15 billion. The department is prioritizing large complex commercial projects that require more detailed information from the awardees for the initial phase of this review.

To conduct this review, the department may use evidence previously submitted by the award recipient, department own analysis or issue information requests to recipients for information relevant to the project to help inform the departments decisional process including, information regarding a project’s financial stars, a project’s engineering and technological feasibility, market conditions, compliance with award terms and conditions and compliance with legal requirements.

Upon determining that a project meets the Trump administration’s policies and priorities and program goals and priorities, then those projects will go ahead. Otherwise, the department may modify the project or may terminate the project based on the outcome of its evaluation, as allowed by law.

The department in recent weeks has announced other policy actions aimed at saving taxpayers’ money. In three new policy memorandums, the department announced that it will follow best practices utilized by fellow grant providers and reduce indirect costs of department funding.