Trump team disavows requesting the names of Energy Department employees

Advisers to President-elect Donald Trump are developing plans to reshape Energy Department programs, help keep aging nuclear plants online and identify staff who played a role in promoting President Barack Obama’s climate agenda.

Trump Team Memo Hints at Big Shake-Up of U.S. Energy Policy

"While the new Administration is entitled to select political appointees who share the President-Elect's views on climate change, any effort to retaliate against, undermine, demote, or marginalize civil servants on the basis of their scientific analysis would be an abuse of authority,"

"And now what we're seeing is an inquiry by the Trump Transition Team that goes right to the heart of the integrity of the science,"

It wants to know who at the Department of Energy attended domestic and international climate talks. It wants emails about those conferences. It also asks about money spent on loan-guarantee programs for renewable energy.

Now, it’s not at all certain what the Trump administration plans to do with any of this information. Possibly nothing. But given the attacks on mainstream climate science by both Trump and many of the members of his transition team, and given that congressional Republicans have called for changing civil service protections to make it easier to fire federal employees, this is understandably getting a lot of attention.

What’s unusual here, though, is the request for a list of any career agency employees or contractors who even worked on the issue. Indeed, it’s unclear why this would even be necessary.

Can you provide a list of all Department of Energy employees or contractors who have attended any lnteragency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon meetings? Can you provide a list of when those meetings were and any materials distributed at those meetings, EPSA emails associated with those meetings, or materials created by Department employees or contractors in anticipation of or as a result of those meetings?

Donald Trump’s presidential transition team has asked the Department of Energy for the names of any federal employees who worked on certain aspects of climate policy during the Obama administration

Dec 9, 2016, 7:30pm EST

The questionnaire requests a list of those individuals who have taken part in international climate talks over the past five years and “which programs within DOE are essential to meeting the goals of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan.”

asking agency officials to identify which employees and contractors have worked on forging an international climate