Musk Buyouts Poised to Hit US’s $400 Billion Green Energy Bank

(Bloomberg) -- The Energy Department’s $400 billion green bank and clean energy funding office are set to be among the hardest hit in a second round of voluntary employee buyouts as part of Elon Musk’s effort to cull the size of the federal government, according to people familiar with the matter. 

More than 2,700 of the Energy Department’s roughly 16,000 employees have so far applied for the deferred resignation program, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss private figures. 

Workers have until midnight Friday to request to vacate their jobs with pay through the end of September. That’s more than double the 1,300 employees who took the first round of buyouts offered earlier this year, according to a document seen by Bloomberg News.   

The Energy Department’s $400 billion Loan Programs Office — which has financed more than $60 billion in energy projects, including a $465 million loan to Musk’s Tesla Inc. in 2010 — is poised to be hit hard by the resignations. Roughly 50% of its staff, about 100 people, have applied for the buyout, including a significant number of the office’s senior officials, according to a person familiar with the matter. 

“All enrollment requests to the deferred resignation program are subject to approval, and certain public safety, national security, law enforcement, or other essential employees may not be approved for participation,” according to an Energy Department statement.

The most recent buyout offer bore many of the hallmarks of Musk’s “Fork in the Road” deferred resignation initiative, which was offered to all federal workers earlier this year. Several departments, including the Pentagon and Transportation Department, offered a second round program as they seek to further downsize their workforces.

The scope of the potential buyouts were reported earlier by Heatmap News.

Earlier: Trump Team Proposes Ending Clean Energy Office, Cutting Billions

The Loan Programs Office, which saw an infusion of funding under former President Joe Biden, has approved financing for companies including Rivian Automotive Inc. and Plug Power Inc. It has nearly $47 billion in conditional commitments to companies it has yet to finalize. 

President Donald Trump’s Energy secretary, Chris Wright, has refocused the bank to prioritize technologies favored by the new administration, including nuclear energy projects. It will also use the loan program to help finance coal-powered electricity in conjunction with a White House effort announced earlier this week to revitalize the US coal industry.

“The brain drain is going to negatively impact the Trump administration’s ability to get the deals they want to do done when you lose that institutional knowledge,” said Kennedy Nickerson, who formerly worked in the Loan Programs Office and is now with investment research firm Capstone LLC.

As many as 80% of employees within the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, which the Trump administration has proposed shutting down, have applied for the buyout program, according to a person familiar with the matter. 

The $27 billion office, which employed about 250 people before Trump’s return to the White House, has awarded billions for carbon capture, solar and hydrogen projects.

Earlier: Fired Nuclear Bomb Specialists Recalled by Energy Department

Other areas that may see a high number of buyouts include the Grid Deployment Office, which oversees $22 billion in federal funding for power infrastructure projects, and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, a unit that has funded research for LED light bulbs and plug-in electric trucks.

The early resignation program is needed to “mitigate the effect of potential involuntary separations,” Wright said in a message to employees. “This is a difficult but necessary effort to make government more efficient and accountable.”

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