My favorite clean tech federal agency is hands down ARPA-E, which as I blogged before is the most important agency you’ve never heard of. It’s funding breakthrough clean technologies and having tremendous success bringing risky and innovative tech to market.

So of course the Trump administration is doing everything it can to undermine the agency. In addition to zeroing it out for funding in its proposed (but probably DOA) budget, Trump’s team now has the agency halting approved grants from going out the door.

It’s a frustrating decision, because these technologies are exactly the kind of thing we want to incubate and develop here in America — if not for the environmental benefit then at least for the economic gains.

ThinkProgress has a nice description of the agency’s work that is now threatened, including this success story:

The agency is focused on “high-impact, high-risk and high-reward” projects, Townsend noted, and he agreed with the former program director that these are areas in which the private sector likely would not invest. For example, researchers for a group called Makani Power created a wind turbine project, funded by ARPA-E, that sends airborne kite-like wind turbines high into the air where they harness a more consistent and powerful wind source than earthbound wind turbines. Makani Power designed the drone kites to automatically take off and adjust themselves to the windstream to maximize energy production.

ARPA-E awarded Makani Power a $3 million grant in 2009 for the project. In 2013, Google X, the search engine company’s research and investment arm, acquired Makani Power, turning the research project into a success story for ARPA-E.

Let’s hope this freeze on grants is temporary, and that the agency’s bipartisan allies in Congress can save the day when it comes to longer-term funding.