Hydropower is in hot water. Will Trump’s DOE release funding to help?

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America’s hydropower systems are in hot water — but the federal government may soon unclog a stream of funding to help them out.

We’ve been using water to generate electricity in the U.S. since the 1880s, expanding from projects harvesting Niagara Falls for power to a whole network of systems that span the rivers of the West. America’s dams have since become a reliable, round-the-clock source of clean energy, generating nearly 6% of the nation’s power in 2025 even as drought in the West limited many projects’ capacity.

That long history is exactly why hydroelectricity is now in trouble. Hundreds of dams across the U.S. representing nearly 16 GW of capacity will have to be relicensed by the federal government in the coming years, as Alexander C. Kaufman previously reported for Canary Media. But the average dam in the U.S. is 65 years old, and many were built without the infrastructure they’d need to be licensed today, like passages for fish and other wildlife. Many operators will have to choose between spending millions of dollars on infrastructure upgrades or simply shutting down — and some are already choosing the latter.

In September 2024, the Biden administration announced it would use $430 million from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law to address some dams’ dilemmas. The pool of funding was supposed to be distributed by the now-defunct Grid Deployment Office and go toward grid resiliency upgrades, safety improvements, and environmental retrofits like fish passages at 212 facilities across the U.S. At least 17 of those facilities are up for relicensing through 2036.

Like tons of other federal clean energy funding, this initiative stalled out under the Trump administration. But this week, it showed some promising signs of life: The DOE’s Hydropower and Hydrokinetic Office — formerly the Water Power Technologies Office — announced it’ll resume negotiations to issue that $430 million, which, when paired with private investments at each facility, could result in more than $2.8 billion in improvements.

That’s a noteworthy amount for the U.S. hydropower industry, which doesn’t have the deep pockets it did decades ago, back before cheaper power sources like solar, wind, and natural gas had reached their current dominance. Even so, the funding won’t resuscitate the industry on its own. Facilities will still have to cope with challenges like years of relicensing bureaucracy and the capacity-diminishing effects of drought, which will only worsen with climate change. But in a country that’s now scrambling for all the nonstop power it can get, solving hydropower’s hang-ups has a huge upside.

TWO MORE BIG THINGS/​More big energy stories

Wind power’s month of major wins and losses

Another two offshore wind projects are being cast out to sea. The Interior Department announced Monday that it had reached a deal with Bluepoint Wind, off New York, and Golden State Wind, off California, in which their developers would be refunded for abandoning the offshore wind leases and reinvesting the money in fossil fuel projects instead. It’s essentially the same agreement the agency worked out with TotalEnergies a few weeks ago — a deal that Democrats in Congress are moving to investigate.

But it’s not all bad news for offshore wind power. Vineyard Wind, a project the Trump administration unsuccessfully tried to halt, began selling power to Massachusetts this week under a contracted price that’s expected to save Bay Staters $1.4 billion on their power bills over the array’s lifetime.

Meanwhile, on dry land, the massive SunZia wind project recently started delivering electrons to California — and it’s already propelling the state’s grid to new wind power generation records.

These Republicans want to preserve clean energy tax credits

A small group of House Republicans has proposed something a little unexpected: restoring Biden-era clean energy tax credits.

The American Energy Dominance Act, introduced late last week, would erase the accelerated June 30, 2026 expiration date that President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act set for many renewable energy incentives — a change that would once again let developers access investment and production tax credits into the 2030s. The proposal would also remove early expiration dates for incentives related to energy-efficient buildings and clean hydrogen.

The four Congress members sponsoring the bill include one who signed a letter urging the preservation of clean energy incentives in the OBBBA, and another who voted against the megabill — and remains vulnerable to a Democratic upset in his reelection fight this fall.

The new proposal follows an effort by more than half of House Democrats to reestablish clean energy tax credits gutted by OBBBA, though neither piece of legislation is likely to pass in the Republican-controlled House. But the chamber probably won’t remain in GOP hands after the midterm elections, and both of these bills suggest the incentives could be saved if Democrats regain congressional control.

WHAT TO KNOW THIS WEEK/​Clean energy news to know this week

Clean money: Reports find the U.S. renewable energy sector could install a record amount of new capacity in 2026 and attract $120 billion in investment as developers race to meet demand growth and claim expiring federal tax credits. (Latitude Media)

All gas bans, no brakes: Even though a court struck down Berkeley, California’s pioneering ban on gas hookups in new buildings three years ago, similar lawsuits against building electrification policies have fallen short. (Canary Media)

Scapegoating efficiency: Maryland, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island are looking to slash energy-efficiency funding to quickly lower power bills, but experts say the moves will cost residents in the long run. (Canary Media)

Sowing REAP’s revival: The Trump administration froze the federal Rural Energy for America Program, which helps farmers install bill-reducing clean energy projects, but supporters hope Congress can restore the popular, bipartisan initiative with this year’s Farm Bill. (Canary Media)

Data center ban deferred: Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) vetoes what would have been the first statewide data center moratorium, saying it would have blocked a widely supported project already under development. (Maine Morning Star)

Lithium lode: A large swath of untapped lithium deposits along the East Coast could provide the U.S. with enough of the crucial battery metal for hundreds of years, a new federal report finds. (E&E News)

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