On September 26, 2025, a quiet email sent to staff at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) set off a storm of controversy that’s still reverberating through the halls of government and the wider scientific community. The message, obtained by Politico and later confirmed by multiple outlets including Yahoo News and The New York Times, directed employees to avoid a growing list of terms in both internal and public communications. Among the banned words: “climate change,” “green,” “decarbonization,” “emissions,” “energy transition,” “sustainability,” “clean energy,” “dirty energy,” “carbon footprint,” and even phrases like “tax breaks,” “tax credits,” and “subsidies.”
Rachel Overbey, acting director of external affairs for the DOE, wrote in the now-infamous email: “Please ensure that every member of your team is aware that this is the latest list of words to avoid—and continue to be conscientious about avoiding any terminology that you know to be misaligned with the administration’s perspectives and priorities.” The directive, as reported by Politico, applies not only to public-facing statements but also to internal communications, reports, and even federal funding requests.
For many, this wasn’t just another bureaucratic memo. It was a flashpoint in a growing debate over political interference in science and the direction of U.S. environmental policy. The Environmental Voter Project, a prominent advocacy group, didn’t mince words: “It’s like they’re trying to cover up a homicide.” Lotte Leicht, advocacy director at Climate Rights International, echoed the sentiment, declaring, “Banning words won’t change reality… Censorship can’t erase facts: The climate crisis is real, it’s human-made, and deadly. Silencing science = endangering lives.”
The list of banned words reads like a roll call of modern environmental science. Terms fundamental to climate policy—“climate change,” “decarbonization,” “sustainability”—are now officially discouraged. Even “emissions” is reportedly off-limits, deemed too negative a term. According to the memo, officials must steer clear of this language not only in their public remarks but even in the paperwork that forms the backbone of federal research and grant applications.
DOE spokesperson Ben Dietderich responded to the uproar by stating the agency hadn’t formally prohibited the use of these words and would investigate the validity of the email, but the damage was done. As reported by Ford Authority, the move coincides with other high-profile efforts by the Trump administration to roll back environmental regulations, including a proposal from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to rescind the 2009 Endangerment Finding. That landmark rule, established during the Obama era, officially recognized greenhouse gases as a threat to human health and enabled the EPA to regulate vehicle emissions. If the current proposal is finalized, it would remove all federal greenhouse gas standards for light-, medium-, and heavy-duty vehicles—a move with sweeping implications for automakers and the climate.
The political context for this linguistic crackdown is impossible to ignore. Since returning to the White House in January 2025, President Donald Trump has made no secret of his skepticism toward climate science. At the United Nations General Assembly just last week, he declared, “This ‘climate change,’ it’s the greatest conjob ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion. All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people that have cost their countries fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success. If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.”
Trump’s administration has also withdrawn from the Paris Agreement for a second time, declared an “energy emergency” to benefit the fossil fuel sector, and nominated Chris Wright—a former fracking CEO and outspoken critic of renewable energy targets—as Secretary of Energy. Wright, who once described net zero 2050 goals as “just a colossal train wreck” and “a monstrous human impoverishment program,” has already canceled $13 billion in funding for renewable energy projects. He’s also been accused of spreading misinformation about the limitations of solar power, tweeting, “If you wrapped the entire planet in a solar panel, you would only be producing 20% of global energy.” (Experts point out that, in reality, covering the Earth in solar panels would generate vastly more energy than humanity uses in a year.)
The scientific community, for its part, is united in its opposition to these policy shifts. As a 2009 statement from 18 major scientific associations put it: “Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver.” Today, 97% of climate scientists agree that human-caused climate change is real and driven by greenhouse gases, a consensus that stands in stark contrast to the administration’s rhetoric.
The impact of the banned words policy is already being felt. Researchers and grant writers now face the daunting task of communicating about climate science without using its core vocabulary. As reported by Yahoo News, this creates “an immediate and detrimental bureaucratic hurdle,” making it harder to craft clear mission statements or apply for federal funding. Rakesh Bhandari, associate director at the University of California, Berkeley, warned, “This will not only affect research and policy directly, it will also affect what we see and don’t see and what we say and don’t say. The state has this power in virtue of its legitimate and cognitive authority.”
Critics argue that the DOE’s move is part of a broader trend toward political censorship within federal agencies. The New York Times compiled a list in March 2025 of nearly 200 terms that have been discouraged across government, touching not just on climate science but also on topics like diversity, disability, gender, and mental health. Ross Seidman, senior counsel for a Democratic state senator in Maryland, quipped, “More ‘banned words’ from the party of free speech.”
Meanwhile, the automotive industry is watching closely. Ford, for example, has submitted a federal filing requesting “modest” greenhouse gas emissions standards to take effect with the 2025 model year, a move that could be rendered moot if the EPA’s deregulatory plans proceed. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a major industry lobby group, has voiced support for rolling back emissions rules, reflecting the complex interplay of business, politics, and science at the heart of the debate.
For many Americans, the controversy over banned words is about more than semantics. It’s a window into the struggle over who gets to define reality—and who gets to shape the nation’s response to one of the defining challenges of our time. As Lotte Leicht put it, “Silencing science = endangering lives.” The words may be disappearing from official documents, but the issues they describe remain as urgent as ever.
In the end, the fight over language at the Department of Energy is a vivid reminder that in politics, as in science, words matter. And when those words are erased, the consequences reach far beyond the page.
