On April 20, President Trump signed a series of presidential determinations under Section 303 of the Defense Production Act (DPA) of 1950, invoking Title III authorities to support selected energy and energy-related industrial capabilities that the White House has deemed essential to national defense. The determinations appear intended to enable the Department of Energy (DOE) to deploy Title III support mechanisms for these categories, including purchases, purchase commitments and other financial instruments, subject to available appropriations and implementation decisions.
The determinations cover grid infrastructure; natural gas transmission, processing and storage; liquefied natural gas capacity; coal supply chains and baseload power generation capacity; domestic petroleum production, refining and logistics capacity; and a broader category addressing large-scale energy and energy-related infrastructure. In practical terms, the action creates a legal pathway for DOE to support projects involving transformers; high-voltage transmission components; advanced conductors; substations; gathering and transmission pipelines; compression and processing plants; underground storage, liquefaction and marine load infrastructure; coal mining and logistics assets; generating-unit availability and life-extension work; petroleum storage; and marine terminals. The administration is plainly framing these capabilities as defense-relevant amid electricity-demand growth, supply-chain bottlenecks and fuel-price pressure.
Building on President Trump’s January 2025 national energy emergency declaration, the White House memoranda expressly invoke section 303(a)(7) to waive certain otherwise applicable Title III prerequisites, thereby signaling an effort to accelerate DOE’s use of DPA Title III funding tools. Importantly, we do not read the determinations as independently waiving the full set of permitting, siting or environmental review requirements that may still apply to individual projects. Rather, they are likely best understood as an effort to speed and justify the use of Title III industrial-base support authorities in sectors the administration views as strategically important.
Although DPA authorities have previously been used in support of energy-related industrial policy, this round is notable for both its breadth and its explicit inclusion of coal supply chains and coal-fired baseload generation. The White House has justified that inclusion on defense-readiness and grid-reliability grounds, including the electricity demands associated with industrial expansion and artificial intelligence. Industry groups welcomed the move, while environmental and public-interest groups criticized it as an overextension of emergency authority in support of fossil-fuel priorities. In our view, the key uncertainty is whether Title III support can materially alter the economics and timing of large infrastructure projects that remain constrained not only by capital access, but also by siting, permitting, supply-chain and construction bottlenecks. The practical significance of these determinations will, therefore, depend less on the issuance of the presidential memoranda themselves than on how DOE structures and deploys support, how much funding is actually available, and whether the administration can pair Title III financing with broader regulatory and project-execution measures.
