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Harvard’s congressional districts have seen the largest funding cuts in Massachusetts as the federal government enters the 27th day of its shutdown.
Massachusetts has lost more than $500 million in grants for transportation and energy initiatives. Nearly $400 million have come from District 5 and District 7, the two districts that encompass most of Harvard.
The Department of Energy cut funding from two Cambridge entities, MIT and Multisensor Scientific, Inc. MIT lost three grants from the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy that funded clean energy projects and enhanced transportation for underserved areas. Multisensor Scientific, Inc lost one grant from the Office of Fossil Energy.
But MIT was not the only university hit by the shutdown cuts. The University of Massachusetts also lost two EERE grants and the trustees of Boston University lost one EERE grant. As of Oct. 26, Harvard has not lost any EERE grants — but the DOE cut $89 million in funding in May, which has since been reinstated by a federal judge’s order.
The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources lost a $3.9 million award for a 2024 project to help cities that adopted energy efficient building codes or solar and battery projects.
Building codes that the DOER works on expand access to climate resilient energy technologies, which allow for essential services to stay on during emergencies for families in affordable housing. The DOER received $545 million in federal funding last year for grid modernization and solar power programs.
The Department of Energy Resources was jointly awarded $20 million in August 2024 with Cambridge, Boston, and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center to implement building performance standards, including requiring large non-residential buildings in Cambridge to reduce emissions on a path to net zero.
The grant was allocated to fund staff capacity in Cambridge and Boston to support building owners and implement the ordinance, according to Cambridge city spokesperson Jeremy H. Warnick, as well as providing individual technical assistance to building owners to reduce their emissions to meet both cities’ standards.
“At this stage, no further information on next steps has been provided to implement the use of the grant,” Warnick said.
Massachusetts Governor Maura T. Healey ’92 said that President Donald Trump is “further weaponizing his government shutdown to cost people jobs and hurt our economy” in a press release.
“All of our residents will be harmed by this vindictive action,” Healey added. “We need the Trump Administration to restore this funding and reopen our government.”
All Massachusetts delegation members also responded to the cuts in a letter to DOE Secretary Chris Wright, writing that the department has yet to inform grant recipients or Congress members how the cancellations will affect “projects with ongoing work, open reimbursement requests, and other activities throughout the country.”
“These terminations will hamstring American competitiveness, drive up energy costs, and hurt domestic manufacturing,” the legislators wrote.
Cambridge residents are already facing high energy costs, with the utility company Eversource increasing its gas rate by 13 percent due to an increase in infrastructure and maintenance fees. The squeeze may only be compounded by the funding cuts, which hit National Grid — one of the main energy providers in the state — particularly hard.
The company lost a Grid Deployment Office grant to support the Future Grid project, a plan to upgrade and expand the capacity of the electric distribution grid. National Grid serves 2.3 million customers in more than 240 Massachusetts cities.
Energy equipment company Littoral Power Systems also lost $4 million for a project aimed at using neural networks to improve cost models for using energy from ocean waves.
Littoral Power Systems and other companies received cancellation letters on Oct. 2 with language claiming the relevant grant “no longer effectuates the Department of Energy’s priorities.”
“In our case, this makes no sense because of the stated goals of the current administration; it directly contradicts at least two Executive Orders issued this year,” CEO David Duquette wrote in a statement to The Crimson.
The company is now in the process of appealing the grant cancellation, but Duquette said he has “no idea whether it will be successful.” Duquette also slammed the cut, writing that the move is “inconsistent with the DOE’s mission to drive reliable and affordable American energy innovation.”
“There are even national security implications. By terminating the award, the DOE is actively surrendering America’s advantage in the strategically vital sector of marine energy, particularly in remote locations,” Duquette wrote.
And the shutdown impacts go beyond infrastructure. Federal food assistance programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will not go out starting on Saturday, after the Trump administration announced that it would not use $5 billion in contingency funding to keep benefits flowing into next month.
The Healey administration announced the creation of the United Response Fund, used to generate donations in partnership with local food banks and organizations, to offset the cuts statewide.
SNAP serves more than 1 million Massachusetts residents and nearly 2,000 Cambridge households.
“Overall, the unfortunate reality is that food security and some of these assistance programs are going to be areas where we're seeing less resources as a result of federal actions” Cambridge City Manager Yi-An Huang ’05 said at the Cambridge City Council meeting last week.
“Just to connect these dots, I think this is going to be a real challenge,” he added.
—Staff writer Megan L. Blonigen can be reached at megan.blonigen@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @MeganBlonigen.
—Staff writer Frances Y. Yong can be reached at frances.yong@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @frances_yong_.
