The House Appropriations Committee passed 34-25 its version of a bill on Wednesday that would give $1.8 billion to the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy and $892.3 million to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
For the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, this would be more than President Donald Trump’s White House request of $1.53 billion. This would be a $15 million increase from the $1.785 billion allocated in the fiscal 2026 budget.
The Energy and Water appropriations bill stays in line with the White House’s fiscal 2027 budget request of $892.3 million for NRC. This represents an 8.1% or $79.1 million decrease from the fiscal 2026 enacted budget of $971.4 million.
The bill passed out of the House Appropriations Energy and Water subcommittee on Friday, May 15. It now heads to the House floor some time after Congress’s scheduled recess Memorial Day week.
During the energy and water appropriations bill markup, Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) proposed an amendment to direct the secretary of energy to create a public database of completed, under construction and under consideration data centers in the United States. The amendment also directs DOE to continually analyze the data centers impacts on local residents’ utility rates.
“Data centers are being built across the country, whether you support them or not, I think communities should have the ability to know when they’re being built, where they’re being built and the impact they will have on their community,” Espaillat said.
House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) led the opposition to Espaillat’s amendment, saying that he was unsure if the data center project detailed plans were publicly available and uncertain about how DOE would collect that information. He also said that maintenance of the database would be administratively burdensome and would likely require additional resources.
“Much of this information is proprietary, commercially sensitive, constantly changing or maintained by state or local permitting authorities or private entities,” Fleischmann said. “I fully recognize the desire to better understand these projects, but the amendment goes too far in asking the Department [of Energy] to report on information that they will literally be unable to obtain.”
The proposed data center database amendment failed after a 27-32 vote. After the vote, House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said that Espaillat’s amendment would have been better suited for another committee discussion than for an authorizing committee due to the cost being unknown and what the regulatory implications would look like for a database.
“It’s a good question… is that something we should do here now in this relatively short time; I’m not sure,” Cole said. “But regardless, I commend the member for raising the issue. I think it’s an important issue.”
Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.) later proposed an amendment to provide an additional $10 million to the Office of Technology Commercialization for fusion energy activity. The $10 million would have come from the category of “other departmental administration”.
In the Congressional energy and water appropriations bill, DOE’s Office of Fusion was offered no funding. The White House’s fiscal 2027 budget request offered $10 million for the standalone office.
According to the bill report, the committee said fusion energy commercialization efforts were better suited to be conducted under the existing Office of Technology Commercialization than in a standalone office. Lee, a member of the Congressional fusion energy caucus, disagreed with this notion.
“While I disagree with that decision, I understand why some may believe it’s a better approach,” Lee said. “But what I don’t understand is why we will task the Office of Technology Commercialization with this new responsibility but not provide the funding necessary to carry it out.”
Fleischmann, who chairs the Congressional fusion energy caucus, said he appreciated Lee’s intent with the amendment but opposed it. Rather than creating a new office, Fleischmann said that the committee should focus on ongoing efforts at the Office of Technology Commercialization instead. Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) also appreciated Lee’s intent with her amendment but said that additional directives when DOE is already making investments in fusion energy would be duplicative.
Lee’s amendment did not get adopted after a 27-33 vote.