Over the last few weeks, President Trump and Elon Musk, head of the newly minted Department of Government Efficiency, have pursued an aggressive agenda of reducing federal spending and eliminating programs in the name of maximizing governmental efficiency. Thus far, their efforts have largely consisted of haphazard staffing and funding cuts that have left hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid stranded and breached data privacy for federal personnel and taxpayers. A recent executive order foreshadows future staffing reductions still to come. Still, there’s a clear mandate from voters to improve government efficiency – Pew Research finds that 56% of Americans believe government is “almost always wasteful and inefficient.” My colleagues and I have experienced these inefficiencies firsthand, across much of the Department of Energy (DOE) and among other parts of the federal government. DOE is now more empowered than ever with both funding and staffing to catalyze American innovation and commercialization for key clean energy sectors at a large scale. Improving DOE efficiency requires precision and thoughtful consideration, not sweeping, ill-considered cuts. It’s time to jumpstart a more meaningful conversation about how DOE can better meet its mission and accelerate the delivery of clean, affordable energy for all. Several improvements to DOE’s processes and policies would increase the agency’s efficiency – without shedding valuable federal employees or culling important innovation programs.  

Talent Retention: Civil servants at DOE, from the top to the bottom of the General Schedule (GS) pay scale, are responsible for running essential public programs that require expertise in both technical fields and navigating federal bureaucracies. For DOE to work well its workplace must both attract and retain talented employees, particularly where the private sector may provide better compensation. High-performers must see a clear path for their advancement and professional growth working in government. Expanding Direct Hire Authority and giving managers more discretion to provide raises and promotions would help create an environment where top talent is rewarded for their work and incentivized to stay in the public sector. 

Collaboration with Philanthropy: It’s estimated that non-profits in the U.S. spend nearly $10 billion annually on activities focused on climate change. Much of this funding would benefit from more strategic and direct coordination with their federal counterparts running programs and offices with similar missions. DOE’s Foundation for Energy Security and Innovation was created in part to fill this gap and can help bring in philanthropic support to address areas where DOE may have resource limitations. By fostering open channels for information-sharing, DOE can identify key challenges and areas in need of additional support, allowing philanthropic organizations to step in and fund innovative solutions. This type of partnership would not only enhance the impact of DOE’s efforts but also allow philanthropy to direct its resources to energy challenges where government falls short. 

Cross-Departmental Integration: Right now, DOE program offices largely award funding via Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) that carry restrictive criteria and requirements. This prescriptive approach limits the Department’s ability to move nimbly in support of promising technologies and innovations that may fall outside of the specific scope of existing FOAs. In contrast, DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) has charted an alternative framework for federal funding that addresses this gap with their OPEN Notice of Funding Opportunity program. OPEN is designed to fund innovative energy technologies by accepting applications for any novel energy project, without a specific thematic focus, enabling groundbreaking solutions across a broad spectrum of energy challenges. OPEN has already led to some notable success stories in long-duration-energy-storage and industrial decarbonization. We should try to replicate these successes across the Department. 

Technology-Neutral Pilot Scale Demonstrations: In addition to the OPEN program, ARPA-E’s approach to funding pilot-scale demonstrations offers a valuable model that could help other DOE offices support the scaling of clean energy technologies. ARPA-E’s Scale Up program is DOE’s only technology-neutral pilot-to-medium-scale demonstration program. However, only prior ARPA-E awardees are eligible to apply. A department-wide program to nurture and pilot promising clean energy and clean industrial technologies would holistically bridge gaps in existing programs and accelerate start-ups’ progress. Funds could support the first five years of a program that develops a pipeline of candidate technologies for 10 pilot-scale demonstrations per year. Breakthrough Energy has proposed a similar idea in their Fast Track report.  

Permitting bottlenecks: Permitting delays are one of the biggest barriers to timely deployment of clean energy projects. While a long-term solution to permitting requires legislative action from Congress, DOE can act in the meantime to ensure that permitting does not become a bottleneck to successful policy implementation and project deployment. To start, DOE can collect data on permitting delays that federally-funded projects face and offer technical assistance to local authorities responsible for issuing permits for innovative and emerging technologies. Additionally, DOE could incorporate an assessment of a project’s permitting readiness into the merit review process to evaluate whether or not a project is prepared to navigate the permitting process successfully. Ultimately, ensuring that federal dollars go toward the projects that are best positioned to acquire the necessary permits for project completion will fast-track the impact of public funding.  

Reforming an institution as large and vital as DOE will require far more detailed planning and research than what’s outlined here. These are not the only things that need be considered to make DOE more efficient – it’s a starting point for imagining what types of quality reforms would actually help DOE deliver on its mission. An Administration genuinely committed to improving government efficiency would engage with longtime civil servants who are closest to the problem, gather data on key pain points in policy implementation, and establish processes to incorporate feedback from private sector partners into operating practices. A scalpel is a better tool to improve government efficiency than a sledgehammer. To achieve true energy dominance, we will need a DOE that is well-resourced, agile, and yes — efficient. But efficiency doesn’t just happen when you fire people and cut spending. True improvements in government efficiency require thoughtful, targeted, well-planned changes in the way that government functions. There’s an imperative to make DOE more effective and more impactful, bringing innovative technologies to market faster and helping the United States lead the way in the ongoing energy revolution while improving the lives of Americans.