Given limited staff, the Department of Energy needs a management plan for projects run through DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED), the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said last week.
OCED was created in 2021 to manage DOE’s clean energy demonstrations, including nuclear, technology-based demonstration projects. The subagency has a framework that includes a phased project approach and independent analyses at key points in the project, GAO said.
As of November 2025, OCED has committed over $18 billion to nearly 100 clean energy demonstration projects. Though, through a recent DOE-wide review, 35 of the awards were terminated. DOE confirmed two projects in its advanced nuclear portfolio are set to proceed, while the rest of the awards are still undergoing review, GAO said.
According to GAO’s Feb. 11 report, OCED estimated it would need 351 staff members to carry out the vetting. But during the first half of 2025, OCED lost 85% of its staff (going from 285 staff members to 42), including independent assessment staffers. Additionally, in February 2025, OCED issued a stop-work order on nearly all of its support contracts.
With project oversight at a standstill, DOE agreed with GAO’s recommendation and said it is actively working to address it, according to the report. DOE said it plans to fully address the recommendation by the end of March.
“DOE is currently working to implement an internal realignment” on OCED project issues, the department said in the report.
“DOE is identifying statutorily-mandated functions of the office, including the functions discussed in the GAO report, with the objective of ensuring that statutorily-mandated functions are either retained by the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations or assigned to a successor organization, as appropriate,” DOE said.
GAO conducted the performance audit from December 2024 to February 2026.
With OCED losing much of its staff, an OCED official told GAO that DOE’s Office of Project Management likely has the expertise to conduct several oversight functions like independent assessments for OCED. However, just like OCED, the Office of Project Management lost about 60% of its staff between February 2025 and May 2025 and as of December 2025, has not assumed the role of performing independent assessments for OCED, according to the report.