The latest Trump and DOGE casualty: Energy data

The Trump administration has eliminated or stifled critical data at dozens of federal agencies. Now the administration’s actions are hitting a new realm: the energy industry.

For decades, the Energy Information Administration, an independent agency housed inside the Department of Energy, has provided crucial reports on everything from oil and gas to the future of alternative energy. Relied on by oil company CEOs and government policymakers alike, the EIA’s data has been called the “gold standard” by Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of S&P Global and an éminence grise in the world of oil. No less a source than Project 2025 described the EIA as historically providing “independent and impartial analysis.”

Last month, the EIA released its signature report: the Annual Energy Outlook for the United States. Largely based on data gathered during the administration of Joe Biden, the report projected rapid growth in alternative energy and declines in American reliance on coal, oil and natural gas. Agency officials feared that the findings would rankle the “Drill, Baby, Drill” proponents in the Trump administration, according to multiple EIA sources. So instead of promoting the report’s publication with an hourlong webcast and PowerPoint presentation spotlighting key findings, as it has in recent years, the agency released it without any of that. And at a late stage, the EIA deleted the analytical narrative — then 53 pages in draft form — that is typically the centerpiece of the report. Instead the agency posted links to hundreds of data-filled tables and charts and a seven-page explanation of its methods.

That didn’t stop the Energy Department from pillorying the findings. In a press release on the same day the report was published, a department spokesperson attacked the EIA’s report for featuring “the disastrous path for American energy production under the Biden administration” and failing to reflect Trump-initiated policy changes aimed at “ensuring America’s future is marked by energy growth and abundance — not scarcity.”

Now the EIA has privately informed staff that it is scrapping publication of its closely followed International Energy Outlook for 2025. The previous edition of the international outlook, released every two years, contained 70 pages detailing global trends. The paradox: That will leave the field open to the equivalent publication from the Paris-based International Energy Agency, which conservatives accuse of bending its forecasts to promote climate-change goals. (Unlike the U.S. agency, whose projections take into account only formally adopted policies, the international one includes some policies that haven’t been adopted and are considered “aspirational.”)

In an April 16 internal email announcing the cancellation of the international report, which has not previously been reported, Angelina LaRose, assistant administrator in the EIA’s office of energy analysis, blamed the decision on the departure of so many staff experts. More than 100 of the EIA’s 350 staff have left as a result of firings or resignations, in the wake of “Fork in the Road” buyout offers from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. “At this point, you can assume we will not be releasing the IEO this year,” she wrote. “This was a difficult decision based on the loss of key resources.”

In the same memo, LaRose ordered an “‘all hands-on-deck’ type of effort,” before even more EIA analysts departed, to “try to preserve as much institutional knowledge as possible” about the models and procedures used to formulate the international report.

Failing to publish that report is viewed as consequential. Amy Myers Jaffe, a prominent energy consultant and research professor at New York University, called the EIA’s reports and analysis essential. “These are global markets,” she said. “The only way to figure out which policies work or don’t is to have accurate EIA data. Everybody benefits from that analysis, whether you’re in the private sector or the public sector.”

The EIA was established nearly a half-century ago, amid the energy crises of the 1970s, to tackle what had become an urgent need: to collect and report objective data on energy production and consumption. Its regular stream of postings now track oil and gasoline prices, electricity rates, natural gas and crude oil exports, automobile fuel consumption, wind and solar energy generation, coal production and nuclear plant outputs.

Its U.S. Annual Energy Outlook projects long-term trends, based on multiple scenarios, and customarily provides detailed analysis discussing key takeaways from reams of data. For 2025, its baseline “reference case” projected how markets would operate through 2050 under laws and regulations in place as of December 2024, prior to the Trump administration’s efforts to promote fossil fuels. In addition to eight “side cases” based on variations in economic growth, energy pricing and supply, the EIA also modeled two “alternative policy” scenarios. These projected impacts from the elimination of Biden-era laws and regulations reducing carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants and boosting adoption of electric vehicles.

According to the contents pages from the draft, which ProPublica obtained, the deleted narrative highlighted projections in the reference case showing that increased electricity demand would be met through 2050 “mainly by generation from renewable sources”; that “coal generation falls to close to zero”; and that there would be “declines” in domestic consumption of oil and natural gas.

The decision to jettison the report’s traditional explanatory narrative was announced to EIA staff in a March 10 internal email, after the document was largely complete following months of work. “After conferring with the [EIA] front office, we are shifting gears on the material that will be released with this year’s AEO,” assistant administrator LaRose wrote. “We will not be releasing the narrative as currently written and will not be hosting a release event.”

The omission of the analytical section left readers to sort through the data for themselves. Joseph DeCarolis, who served as EIA administrator under Biden and is now an engineering professor at North Carolina State, called the annual outlook’s narrative “extremely important. It’s important to be able to look at the results, interpret them, and explain to your audience what you think the insights are.”

EIA employees said they believe the changes were made out of fear that spotlighting unwelcome findings and projections would make the agency a Trump target. “There was a concern that any narrative we put out would be seen as ideological,” said Emily Schaal, an EIA statistician who worked on the U.S. report. Another EIA employee commented: “Fewer people were going to get mad if we just threw the numbers out.”

Asked about the decision, EIA spokesperson Chris Higginbotham said the agency’s leadership jettisoned the analysis because it “decided it was most important to prioritize getting our AEO results to the public as soon as we could rather than waiting longer to complete a written market analysis.” He added, “We do not make decisions about our data or our analyses with the goal of influencing outcomes or avoiding pushback.”

With regard to EIA’s international report, Higginbotham said, “We remain committed to maintaining our long-term energy modeling capabilities.” He asserted that the staff reductions will not compromise the agency’s work. “We are committed to meeting EIA’s quality standards,” he said, “and we will not publish any data or analysis that doesn’t meet those standards.”

Meanwhile, the EIA has canceled or delayed other data reports and projects. Those moves, combined with the turmoil and departures, have devastated morale, according to current and former EIA employees.

Schaal was among those grappling with the tumult. After completing a doctorate in math, Schaal, 28, joined the EIA as a statistician in June 2024, working remotely from Michigan, and expected to remain at the agency for years. Instead, she was one of about 30 probationary employees who were abruptly terminated on Feb. 13, just weeks into the new administration. A lawsuit challenging firings at six agencies, filed by a union that represents government workers, prompted a federal judge to order their reinstatement, and Schaal returned to the EIA in mid-March.

“Everyone at EIA had been through a month of torture,” she told ProPublica. Employees were dealing with chaos, uncertainty and fears of termination. In early April, Schaal accepted a new deferred resignation offer, with plans to depart on April 19.

On April 11, hours before a midnight deadline for the resignation program, EIA’s acting administrator presided over an all-hands meeting with a top deputy, where he read a prepared statement urging employees to take the offer. Then the two managers gave assurance they had done “a great job” defending the agency in a meeting with DOGE officials, who were certain to treat them all “appropriately,” according to four people who attended the all-hands meeting.

Schaal was furious. After the session ended, she pounded out an angry email to the two bosses and then shared it with everyone who still remained at EIA. “DOGE doesn’t care what we do and will treat us the same as all other agencies: with contempt,” she wrote. “Shame on you for falling in line and giving up without any perceptible effort to fight. Shame on you for keeping those you purport to lead in the dark. Shame on you for betraying the mission set to us by Congress and selling out the American people.”

On the following Monday, Schaal was summoned to a virtual meeting with her supervisor, where she was presented with a formal letter of reprimand for her “unprofessional and disrespectful email,” as well as a second letter notifying her that she was being placed on administrative leave, a week ahead of her planned departure. The episode made her something of a hero among colleagues who remained behind, who have taken to sharing their frustrations with one another on private Signal groups. (EIA’s spokesperson declined to comment on the episode. Neither DOGE nor the White House replied to requests for comment for this article.)

The EIA, whose director is a presidential appointee, typically chosen from among apolitical academic or industry figures, is poised to get new leadership. Trump’s nominee is Tampa energy consultant Tristan Abbey, a self-described “think-tanker” at conservative groups who has called U.S. dominance in natural gas exports a “generational opportunity.” Abbey, 39, served as an energy staffer on the National Security Council in the first Trump administration. His financial disclosure reports $103,083 in “senior fellow fees” since 2024 from the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation and $435,833 in income from his consulting business, whose clients included Thiel Capital. (Abbey worked for Trump-friendly billionaire Peter Thiel’s investment firms before going into government.) Abbey’s consulting firm also has an eclectic side business focused on publishing books written by or about explorers and historical figures in philosophy and math.

Abbey enjoyed a friendly confirmation hearing on Wednesday before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee. He testified that he would leave his “policy role” behind and affirmed his commitment to the EIA providing “nonpartisan facts.”

Abbey praised the EIA as “the world’s premier energy data agency” but also said it is “in urgent need of revitalization.” He presented an ambitious must-do list seemingly at odds with the current administration’s wholesale cuts. The EIA, Abbey declared, “must clear the decks of unfinished projects,” “recruit and retain the best talent” and “develop the most powerful analytical capabilities.” Among his top priorities, Abbey testified: “the expansion of global energy data collection and analysis.”