For a full recap of last year’s work, read the 2025 Annual Report.
As the calendar turned to January, our organization entered its 10th year of existence. That milestone is both remarkable and, we believe, an indicator of impact.
After serving as the 13th U.S. Secretary of Energy under President Barack Obama, I founded a nonprofit, the Energy Futures Initiative (EFI), with two trusted colleagues from my tenure at the Department of Energy: Joseph Hezir, chief financial officer, and Melanie Kenderdine, founding director of the Energy Policy and Systems Analysis office. In government, we made science the foundation of fact-based policy development. As we built EFI, we again established it as a touchstone of our new organization’s approach.
EFI aimed to support innovation and progress across technology, business, and policy to advance the transition to a low-carbon energy future. We had little idea that a decade later, now as the EFI Foundation (EFIF), we would still be driving that conversation, with our brief ever more relevant.
The work of our early years placed EFI at the forefront of the toughest energy challenges. Our first report examined the U.S. nuclear energy enterprise through the lens of national security. It was followed by a comprehensive survey of multiple innovation pathways to advance the energy transition, as well as pioneering work on carbon dioxide removal. All three of these reports are regarded today as important conversation starters.
Each project created new relationships, new data, and new frameworks that anchor our work—from hard-to-decarbonize industrial sectors and community transition strategies to grid modernization and workforce development.
In 2025 the United States abruptly reversed course on its hard-won gains in federal investment in innovation—from idea generation to deployment. A restrictive notion of U.S. energy dominance has emerged that picks winners outside the realities of market forces. The shortcomings of energy dominance provide an everyday reminder of the merits of an “all of the above” approach would align better with global market development.
We can’t sensibly pretend that clean energy isn’t a growing and crucial part of the global energy marketplace. It’s a fact. Today, China is the leader in this important and expanding space. If we want to compete across the board, we will need to lean into all consequential energy markets and not weakly concede the field to economic competitors.
The United States has long used its position as the largest domestic market as the foundation for export markets. Energy is no exception. Diminishing clean energy domestically limits what our companies can do and what our government can influence internationally.
We must set aside ideology and renew our dedication to an all-of-the-above approach to the climate crisis.
Energy equity, climate change, energy project investability, and trade and energy security need to be part of one conversation. To meet these intertwined challenges, we must rely on a clear, evidence-based framework for durable policy.
These five pillars inform how EFIF promotes new technologies, advances markets, informs policy, and supports communities.
- Shaping the Conversation: We frame climate, energy security, economic competitiveness, affordability, and social equity as one interconnected challenge. We make complex issues accessible and actionable by building trust in research, data, analysis, and public institutions.
- Advancing Innovation in Technology and Policy: We encourage breakthrough technologies and pragmatic policies—working with the federal government, state and local governments, and the private sector to unlock solutions that accelerate progress while ensuring equity.
- Creating Tools for Action: We design the mechanisms needed to deliver change at scale: carbon accounting, workforce development, advanced modeling, and the integration of AI and digital tools that measure results and guide decisions.
- Supporting Large-Scale Carbon Management: We champion a full spectrum of carbon solutions—from clean power and fuels to carbon capture, removal, and geoengineering—ensuring reasonable pathways forward.
- Preparing Communities for Adaptation and Resilience to Climate Change: We work with communities and workers to identify infrastructure that furthers resilient design to reduce the human and economic costs of severe climate impacts, while identifying regional workplace needs and opportunities.
The past year was a busy one. EFIF leaders participated in more than 30 global events. Our engagements included briefings to members of Congress and their staffs and our Energy Futures Finance Forum (EF3) financial bootcamps. At these private workshops, policymakers and investment professionals engaged in frank discussions about what it takes to increase available private capital for breakthrough clean energy innovations and specifically how policy shapes opportunities for investors with different risk-reward realities.
The past year marked the start of several important initiatives, including one we wished was not necessary: examining the innovation impacts after the abrupt loss of thousands of DOE employees and the cancellation of hundreds of federally awarded funds, which now total more than $11 billion. We will continue to track the impact on technology development in our Modernizing American Energy Innovation series.
We also will continue to advance a robust analysis of carbon accounting. The world lacks a rational framework for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions accounting, leaving energy-intensive industries to navigate a patchwork of international rules. This work started with EFIF’s publication last June of the “why” with our Carbon Accounting Framework, followed in October by Integrated Product- and Entity-Level Carbon Accounting: Putting Concepts into Practice. With this framework, we are striving to introduce a concise synthesis of ledger-based accounting for CO2 emissions in a single, verifiable system applicable at the product level.
This is a long-term commitment that must deal with entrenched interests but is central to the energy transition. The carbon accounting framework can provide a needed data-based foundation for global trade and for international clean energy investments while differentiating products according to carbon intensity. It’s exactly the kind of work EFIF was created to do: proposing hard but realistic solutions to critical challenges that some organizations prefer to avoid.
In 2025, EFIF took the leadership role building out demand- side tools for low-carbon energy, tapping into the insights from the 2024 EFIF-led Hydrogen Demand Initiative (H2DI) that designed and implemented demand-side support mechanisms for planned regional clean hydrogen hubs. Even as those hubs face an uncertain future, we are now working to apply those principals to state-level policy innovations by launching a demand-side policy toolkit—starting with a new initiative in Pennsylvania to expand markets for low-carbon building materials.
EFIF also accelerated the activities of the Nuclear Scaling Initiative (NSI)—a collaboration with the Clean Air Task Force and the Nuclear Threat Initiative—to advance its mission to build a global ecosystem capable of deploying 50 gigawatts or more of new nuclear capacity annually by the 2030s. Alongside more than 90 international engagements, NSI developed influential analyses and shaped discussions on the future of nuclear energy in United States and Central and Eastern Europe.
Global energy challenges demand realistic, actionable solutions. These are the tangible outcomes of our ambitious agenda.
Our work will continue to reflect a dedication to identifying innovative solutions; promoting pragmatic progress; building durable coalitions; advocating for outcomes; and weaving all of this into one conversation.
Ernest J. Moniz
EFIF Founder and Chief Executive Officer
