A lawsuit being co-led by the Washington State Attorney General argues that federal agencies illegally canceled funding for clean energy projects, including the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub, to punish Democrat-led states.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, calls on the court to vacate a memo and order by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright canceling $27 million in congressionally-approved funding for the hub as well as restoring funding pulled from Washington State University.
“In our constitutional system, only Congress has the power to appropriate funding, and to define if and how federal programs are administered,” the lawsuit stated. “It is the president’s duty, after that legislation is signed by the executive, to execute those laws. He has no power to undo them, whether piecemeal or in their entirety.”
According to media reports, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said the Trump administration “is confident that we will defeat this frivolous lawsuit.”
In 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy selected the hub, organized by the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Association, as one of the seven regional clean hydrogen hubs designed to kick-start clean hydrogen production in the country, cut down on carbon dioxide emissions and create tens of thousands of good-paying jobs. It had the potential to receive up to $1 billion in federal funding as it was built out.
Several projects were proposed as part of the PNWH2 Hub, including Atlas Agro’s $1 billion fertilizer plant in the North Horn Rapids Industrial Park in Richland. The proposed plant would produce green fertilizer from air, water and renewable energy, and officials have estimated it would create up to 235 full-time jobs locally, plus hundreds more during construction and more than 1,000 indirect and induced jobs. The company behind the fertilizer plant has since said it still plans to build the facility.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland was lending its expertise across several fields of study to support the PNWH2 Hub.
Funding for the hydrogen hub was pulled within hours of last fall’s federal government shutdown as Republicans and Democrats reached an impasse over adopting federal budgets or a continuing resolution to keep the government open.
A news release from Wright said DOE determined the canceled projects did “not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs, were not economically viable, and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.”
In total, the Trump administration pulled funding for 223 clean energy projects in 16 states. Nearly all were in states that voted for former Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the last presidential election.
The lawsuit, which includes attorneys general from 12 other states and the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development as plaintiffs, said the pulling of those clean energy dollars was planned political punishment that Trump’s administration was building pretext for since he was sworn in Jan. 20, 2025.
“On his first day in office, President Trump issued executive orders declaring a bogus ‘national energy emergency’ and ordering federal agencies to take action to terminate the ‘Green New Deal,’” according to the lawsuit. “To carry out this directive, the DOE compiled a ‘hit list’ of awards worth billions of dollars, preparing to terminate them to further the administration’s illegal objective of eliminating energy and infrastructure programs created under Congress’s authority in laws such as the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.”
That led to a vague and opaque review process of clean energy projects to provide cover for cutting that funding later, which Trump and Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, began threatening as a shutdown became likely.
“As a government shutdown loomed in late September 2025, the president told reporters he could ‘do things during the shutdown that are irreversible’ to attack Democrats, including ‘cutting programs that they like,’” the lawsuit claims. “The next day, Vought posted on X that DOE would terminate nearly $8 billion in ‘Green New Scam’ funding to fuel ‘the Left’s climate agenda.’”
The lawsuit also claims the Trump administration withdrew millions of dollars in previously awarded funds to WSU for projects on power grid reliability and decarbonization.
“This administration wants to sabotage all of the progress Washington has made in embracing renewable energy and addressing climate change,” Washington Attorney General Nick Brown said. “We refuse to be dragged back to the days of runaway pollution in flagrant violation of the law.”