The National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden fired 114 of its thousands of staffers and contractors Monday, as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to sharply trim research spending across nearly all fields supported by federal agencies in the past. 

The laboratory staff laid off includes employees and subcontractors in both research and operations, NREL said in a statement. “We appreciate their meaningful contributions to the laboratory. NREL’s mission continues to be critical to achieve an affordable and secure energy future,” the statement said. 

But the layoffs could just be the start of slashes to the 3,675 employees NREL most recently listed on its website, if President Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal survives at all intact through Congress. The White House is pitching $19.3 billion in cuts to the Department of Energy’s allotted 2025 spending, according to the website utilitydive.com. 

The White House budget request goes out of its way to ridicule renewable energy research and subsidies promoted heavily by the Biden and Obama administrations: “The Budget cancels over $15 billion in Green New Scam funds committed to build unreliable renewable energy, removing carbon dioxide from the air, and other costly technologies burdensome to ratepayers and consumers,” the budget proposal says. 

“NREL continues to navigate a complex financial and operational landscape shaped by the issuance of stop work orders from federal agencies, new federal directives, and budgetary shifts. As a result, NREL has experienced workforce impacts affecting 114 employees across the laboratory, including staff from both research and operations, who were involuntarily separated today,” NREL’s Monday statement said. 

The Golden lab runs premier international research facilities and experiments in improving wind turbines and solar photovoltaic cells for power generation, in addition to dozens of other programs in biofuels, efficiency, hydrogen and fuel cells, transportation, and more. The lab frequently partners with universities and private business on innovative projects, such as the Colorado “SunTrain” proposal late in 2024. 

NREL was to help Colorado government, Xcel and entrepreneurs apply for a $10 million grant to run trains with massive batteries charged up by solar and wind farms on the Eastern Plains. The trains could then roll into metro Denver or any other area in need of large-scale energy storage and output. 

Some fans of the lab’s work had been encouraged it would maintain a top role in government research through involvement in Trump-favored concepts. Energy Secretary Chris Wright came to the Golden lab in early April to promote a Trump administration plan for a private data center and power plant on land owned by NREL. They plan such facilities at 16 national laboratories.

“Private data center companies, that’s where the capital is, that’s where the investment is and on federal land, we make a commercial arrangement with them,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said.