Sponsors (2)
The bill significantly increases federal investment and program activity to grow U.S. marine and water-power technology, manufacturing, grid integration, and workforce capacity—boosting resilience and domestic industry—while raising federal costs and creating implementation uncertainty, potential program dilution, and added administrative burdens.
Taxpayers and the water-power sector: Authorizes $300 million per year (FY2026–2030) for water power RD&D, providing multi-year funding certainty to accelerate development and deployment of hydropower and marine energy technologies.
Regional manufacturers and university partners: Federal support helps scale U.S. production of composite and additive-manufactured marine energy components, strengthening domestic supply chains and creating jobs.
Students and current/future energy workers: Expands training, student research, competitions, and fellowships to grow the pipeline of water power and marine energy talent and improve workforce readiness.
Taxpayers: The $300 million per year authorization increases federal spending and could raise taxpayer costs or crowd out other priorities if Congress appropriates those amounts.
Energy stakeholders and researchers: Unspecified suballocations between marine energy and hydropower create uncertainty about how funds will be distributed, complicating planning and investment decisions.
Researchers and applicants: Broadening program purposes to cover manufacturing, desalination, data centers, and other priorities risks diluting RD&D focus and spreading limited funds thin across many activities.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Broadens DOE water power R&D authorities to support U.S. manufacturing, improve environmental assessment and grid modeling, and expand marine energy resilience and infrastructure coverage.
Introduced January 16, 2026 by Suzanne Bonamici · Last progress January 16, 2026
Updates and broadens the Department of Energy’s water power research, development, and demonstration authorities to better support U.S. manufacturing, marine energy, hydropower, and pumped storage technologies. The changes add manufacturing and equipment language, expand environmental assessment and grid-modeling purposes, broaden infrastructure and resilience uses for marine energy, and expand consultation to include State, local, and Tribal entities (including Alaska Native Corporations).