E&E News investigation reveals Energy Department banned 'climate change,' 'decarbonization,' and other terms from EERE work products

On September 26, 2025, the Department of Energy directed employees at its Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy to avoid using approximately a dozen scientific and policy terms in all work products. The banned phrases included "climate change," "decarbonization," "clean energy," and "energy transition," and the prohibition extended to the EERE website, internal reports, public documents, and federal funding opportunity descriptions for research grants. NPR obtained an internal email proving the directive existed, contradicting the department's public denial that any such ban applied to "climate change" or "emissions."

EERE is the federal government's largest clean energy funder, with a $3.46 billion annual budget and a statutory mission under the Energy Policy Act to advance energy efficiency and renewable energy technology. Banning the core vocabulary of that mission from all agency communications restricts EERE's ability to describe the subject matter Congress charged it to study — including in the funding opportunity descriptions that inform researchers about what grants are available. The directive is part of a broader Trump administration pattern of removing climate-related content from federal websites and restricting government scientific communication.

Politico first reported the existence of the internal directive, which NPR independently obtained and confirmed. DOE denied the ban publicly, claiming no directive existed to avoid "climate change" or "emissions" — a denial the internal email directly contradicts. A related but distinct earlier action — the January 2025 removal of "climate change" language from the DOE website — was a separate directive affecting only the public-facing website.