The Tri-Cities’ largest employer eliminated an estimated 400 jobs last year amid federal budget cuts and shifting priorities.

This year, it could be forced to cut more than twice that number.

That’s based on a recent analysis of the proposed fiscal year 2027 budget for Pacific Northwest National Laboratory since more details were published by the U.S. Department of Energy, or DOE.

Overall, President Donald Trump’s administration provides $619 million for PNNL, according to DOE data tables. That’s 20% less, or a cut of $157 million, compared to the lab’s current budget. This fiscal year’s budget also was a reduction from the fiscal year 2025 budget.

While some of the lab’s research activities would receive slight funding boosts – specifically those connected to weapons activities and nuclear nonproliferation – budgets for renewable energy, climate and atmospheric science, and nuclear energy would be slashed, in one case by more than 80%, according to data tables published by DOE.

Friends of PNNL, a grassroots group that advocates for the lab and its work, said those cuts could lead to 1,000 people or more losing their jobs, based on last year’s cuts and job reductions.

“It’s actually a similar situation to what we faced last year,” Doug Ray, a former lab executive with Friends of PNNL, told the Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business. “(The cuts) would be horrible if they were implemented, for the lab and the community.”

PNNL directed all questions about the federal budget to DOE’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Initial documents on the FY 2027 budget proposal, released on April 4, showed a $1.1 billion, or 13%, cut to DOE’s Office of Science, PNNL’s primary source of funding. The White House also had proposed cutting DOE’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy programs – now called Critical Minerals and Energy Innovations and one of the primary programs at PNNL.

Rather, DOE would focus on artificial intelligence, particularly its Genesis Mission, fusion energy, and critical minerals and materials.  

“These strategic investments are integral to (the Office of Science’s) mission to grow the scientific and technical knowledge that spurs discoveries and innovations, explore nature’s mysteries from subatomic particles to the building blocks of life and provide researchers with state-of-the-art user facilities,” according to a DOE memo detailing the budget proposal. 

But the data tables detailing funding for each lab, published in the days following the proposed budget’s release, show the affected PNNL programs:

• Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation, which includes renewable energy research into hydropower, alternative fuels such as hydrogen, as well as energy sources such as solar and wind, would be reduced by 81%, or more than $94 million.
• Office of Science funding would be cut by nearly $88 million, or 39%, with biological and environmental research taking the biggest hits.
• Defense nuclear nonproliferation work would get an additional $43.5 million, a 22% increase.
• Office of Electricity, which focuses on energy storage and grid resilience, would be reduced by nearly $5 million, or 9%.
• Projects related to cybersecurity and energy security would be cut by more than $4 million, or 27%.
• Weapons activities, specifically work around engineering and manufacturing, would get a nearly $800,000 boost.

Friends of PNNL said they appreciate the renewed commitment to national security research, such as work on nuclear nonproliferation, as well as DOE’s new AI-focused Genesis Mission. But they otherwise questioned the logic of cuts to efforts around renewable energy and climate science.

“At a time when global oil supplies are increasingly under threat, cutting America’s alternative energy innovation is a dangerous move,” the organization said in a statement.

Ray said it is expected for priorities for scientific research to change and evolve over time, but he added that those shifts must be made carefully and deliberately.

“The atmosphere is one of concern and I am sure that the best people are looking elsewhere to see if there’s a better place for them to do the research they love to do,” he said. “People will relocate if they find a place they think is better for them and their career.”

Ray added he’s hopeful that the state’s congressional delegation can push back and prevent most if not all the cuts from happening.

He credited U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, both D-Washington, and U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Washington, for mitigating some of the deeper cuts that were pushed by the White House last year.

Newhouse’s office told the Journal that the Congressman is currently reviewing the president’s proposed budget and “understands the desire to use tax dollars as efficiently as possibly.”

“With that in mind, he will continue to use his position as an appropriator to ensure there is federal support to continue the critical mission of engineers, researchers and other dedicated employees at PNNL,” the statement from Newhouse’s office said.

A statement from Murray provided by her office echoed the senator’s comments to “tear up President’ Trump’s budget and write a new one” that she made earlier in the month in response to proposed cuts to the Hanford site cleanup effort.

“The lab does cutting-edge, irreplaceable work to make our electrical grid more reliable and secure, protect the United States from nuclear threats around the world, and to support the Hanford cleanup mission. It also conducts critical research into renewable energy and climate sciences. We simply cannot afford to skimp on the critical research conducted at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory,” Murray said in her statement.