Department of Energy

What the Department of Energy does

The Department of Energy, or DOE, is the U.S. federal department for energy, science and nuclear security. Its mission statement speaks of meeting energy, environmental and nuclear challenges through science and technology. As of October 2026, Chris Wright is the 17th Secretary of Energy. The Senate confirmed him on February 3, 2025.

The department was activated on October 1, 1977. Its own history says it brought two traditions together. One was nuclear weapons work dating from the Manhattan Project. The other was a loose mix of federal energy programs.

The fiscal 2027 budget request asks for $53.91 billion in discretionary funding. The largest share, $32.80 billion, is for the National Nuclear Security Administration. The Office of Science would get $7.14 billion.

Why it matters for technology

DOE has 17 national laboratories. The department says many of their instruments and facilities are found nowhere else in the world. Three fields this site follows run through the department:

• Fusion. In December 2022, DOE announced fusion ignition at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It said a December 5 experiment delivered 2.05 megajoules to a target and produced 3.15 megajoules of fusion energy.
• AI for science. Executive Order 14363, signed on November 24, 2025, set up the Genesis Mission. It is a national effort to apply AI to scientific discovery. The order makes the Secretary of Energy responsible for carrying it out within DOE.
• Quantum computing. On June 23, 2026, DOE announced Quantum Genesis. Its goal is a fault-tolerant quantum computing capability for research by 2028. Fault-tolerant means the machine corrects errors as it runs. The quantum computing milestones tracker follows that target.

Recent developments

• October 8, 2026. DOE released its Quantum Genesis Priority Applications. They are eight science problems meant to guide the quantum effort.
• October 8, 2026. DOE announced 12 Phase II Genesis Mission project awards totaling $159 million. One, led by Harvard University, targets quantum error correction.
• October 8, 2026. The White House said 11 industry partners had committed $2.4 billion in tools and compute credits to the Genesis Mission Consortium. Nvidia's $1 billion was the largest.
• September 17, 2026. DOE opened the Q Competition, with up to $215 million in planned funding. It invited proposals for quantum computers with at least 100 logical qubits.

What to watch

• Competition deadline. Final applications for the Q Competition are due by October 19, 2026.
• Funding. Of up to $215 million in planned funding, DOE lists $2.5 million as fiscal 2026 money. It says later funding depends on congressional appropriations.
• Award talks. DOE's award list says selection for award negotiations is not a commitment to provide funding.
• The 2028 goal. Experts quoted by IEEE Spectrum on June 30, 2026 disagreed about the goal. Edward Parker of the Rand Corporation called hundreds of logical qubits by 2028 plausible, though still noisy. Jay Sau of the University of Maryland was more doubtful. He said he could not think of a scientific question such a machine could help with in 2028 without a breakthrough in device quality.