The House on Sept. 4 passed 214-213 the Energy and Water Development Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2026, which provides $24.1 billion for nondefense energy programs, a cut of over $675 million, or 2.7 percent, below the fiscal year 2025 enacted level.
Text of the legislation, the Appropriations Committee report on the bill, and other related information can be found here.
The measure is just the third of 12 annual appropriations bills for the upcoming fiscal year that has passed the House. The Senate has also passed three of the 12 annual appropriations bills for the fiscal year beginning in just 26 days.
A stop gap spending bill (known as a continuing resolution or “CR”) is expected to be needed to keep most federal government doors open after September 30. House and Senate appropriators are considering a CR lasting into early to mid-November.
Energy and Water Appropriations
During debate on Sept. 3 on the Energy and Water Appropriations bill, the House approved by voice vote an amendment by Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) that would increase the Army Corps of Engineers Construction account by $2 million to support Issue Evaluation Studies, including at Black Butte Dam, which is part of the Central Valley Project. It was part of a larger block of amendments approved en bloc.
For the most part, though, no major changes were made to the underlying bill. A Congressional Research Service summary of the bill, including a comparison to past spending levels and details related funding the Trump administration has canceled, is available here.
In a report accompanying the bill, the Appropriations Committee directs the Department of Energy to work with industry to survey electric transmission and distribution system operators for data on new generator interconnection applications and to provide a report to the committee by next year.
Also, in report language the committee wrote "The Committee recognizes the dramatic load growth on the electric grid over the next decade, in part due to the commercial computation sector. As such, the EIA is encouraged to collect data on aggregate state-level, monthly computation sector electricity demand. The EIA is encouraged to publish this data alongside its other data on electricity consumption by customer segment (residential, commercial, industrial) monthly, at state-level granularity."
The committee also noted the unique challenges facing the distribution transformer supply chain and that a stable supply of distribution transformers is critical to preserving the reliability of the grid.
As a result, DOE is encouraged “to conduct activities that will expand domestic manufacturing capacity within the distribution transformer supply chain, including efforts to increase the energy efficiency of the manufacturing process.”
The committee also directed DOE to “continue its efforts to engage with utilities, distribution transformer manufacturers, and other industry stakeholders in the supply chain to analyze and help identify potential solutions that can help ease the supply-demand mismatch.”
