The Department of Energy has banned its staff from using terms like 'climate change,' 'green,' and 'emissions' in a sweeping directive that extends far beyond what most would consider political language. The move signals the Trump administration's deeper push to reshape federal energy policy by controlling the very vocabulary used to discuss it.
The Department of Energy just handed down one of the most sweeping speech restrictions in recent federal history. A Trump appointee's email to energy efficiency staff last Friday didn't just target politically charged terms - it banned words that appear in Webster's dictionary without controversy.
Rachael Overbey, special advisor to the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, sent the directive with stark clarity: 'Please ensure that every member of your team is aware that this is the latest list of words to avoid,' according to Politico's reporting. The forbidden vocabulary reads like a renewable energy glossary turned upside down.
Staff can no longer say 'climate change,' 'green,' 'decarbonization,' 'energy transition,' 'sustainability,' 'subsidies,' 'tax breaks,' 'tax credits,' or 'carbon footprint.' But the ban gets stranger when it reaches seemingly technical terms. Even 'emissions' made the cut, apparently because it 'implies some level of negativity' despite its neutral dictionary definition.
The irony runs deep here. The Supreme Court ruled in 2007's Massachusetts v. EPA that greenhouse gas emissions aren't just neutral scientific measurements - they can be regulated as air pollutants. Now the federal government is telling its own scientists they can't use the word at all.
This hits the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy particularly hard. EERE emerged from the wreckage of the 1973 oil crisis, when Arab nations' embargo sent gas prices through the roof and Americans waiting in mile-long gas station lines. Congress created the office specifically to develop renewable energy and efficiency technologies that would shield the US economy from future commodity shocks.
Fast-forward five decades, and President Trump is making the opposite bet. His administration has doubled down on fossil fuels while dismissing renewable investments as a 'green energy scam.' At the United Nations last week, Trump went after countries investing in solar, wind, and batteries with a blunt warning: 'Your country is going to fail.'
The global energy markets aren't getting that memo. Renewable energy investment smashed records in the first half of 2025, reaching $386 billion - a 10% jump from the previous year, according to BloombergNEF. Offshore wind and small-scale solar drove most of the growth.
The word ban extends beyond EERE to other parts of the energy department, sources tell Politico. It's part of a broader effort to reshape how federal agencies discuss energy policy, moving away from transition-focused language toward what the administration calls 'energy dominance.'
For the thousands of government scientists, engineers, and policy experts working on everything from battery research to grid modernization, the directive creates an odd linguistic puzzle. How do you discuss carbon capture without mentioning emissions? How do you analyze renewable energy economics without referencing tax credits?
The timing is particularly striking. While Trump's team restricts government vocabulary, private investors are pouring money into exactly the technologies his administration won't let federal employees properly name. That disconnect between policy rhetoric and market reality might define the next four years of American energy development.
The Department of Energy's word ban represents more than bureaucratic theater - it's an attempt to reshape policy discourse by controlling the language used to discuss it. But with renewable investment hitting new records globally and market forces driving the energy transition regardless of federal rhetoric, the administration may find that banning words doesn't stop the underlying trends they describe. The real test will be whether this linguistic restriction actually changes how federal energy policy gets implemented, or if it simply forces government workers to find creative workarounds for describing the same realities.
