Half a century of energy budget authority.
The Department of Energy's budget authority, FY1977–FY2031, from OMB's Historical Tables. DOE began operations in October 1977; there is no series before it. Budget authority includes supplemental funding, so the spikes are real — the 2009 Recovery Act energy stimulus and the 2021–2022 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act surges — rising above a steadier defense and science base.
FY2027 budget authority
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nominal · OMB estimate
All-time peak
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Series span
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0 fiscal years
Years parsed
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contiguous, numeric — self-checked
DOE budget authority — the arc since 1977
nominal (current $) · OMB Historical Table 5.2Reading the arc
DOE budget authority is not a smooth line. The base — the nuclear-weapons enterprise, the national laboratories, and the science programs — grows roughly with the rest of government, but agency-wide budget authority spikes whenever a large one-time law lands: the 2009 Recovery Act (ARRA) energy stimulus and the 2021–2022 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Those are real appropriations, not base growth — which is exactly why a department-level monitor reads the recurring request through its budget functions and keeps the defense (050) half separate from the civilian energy and science budget. This series is shown in nominal dollars: OMB's Historical Table 5.2 publishes no constant-dollar basis for DOE, and we do not synthesize one.