Department of Energy federal obligations

Few awards, large dollars under CGAC 089

Divide $734,091,874,676.57 by 17,651 awards and the implied mean is about $41.6 million per award, among the highest means in this packet range. National-lab management contracts, major construction, and other multi-year vehicles can each occupy a single row while carrying billions. The mean is not a typical small-business purchase order. USAspending.gov is the source; SpendingVault does not add classified nuclear-weapons line items beyond what the public award file contains.

Fiscal year 2026 is the latest year on the packet. The $734,091,874,676.57 total is a cumulative obligation sum through that cap, not DOE’s annual appropriations request.

That mix is the research takeaway from the two packet facts together. 17,651 rows against $734,091,874,676.57 imply laboratory-scale and construction vehicles rather than mass small purchases. A later extract can change both the dollar total and the award count as lab-contract modifications inside FY 2026 can move a thin file’s mean quickly.

What the 17,651-row file includes and omits

Each of the 17,651 records is an award action tagged to awarding-agency 089. Modifications may appear as separate rows or as updates depending on how the source file stores them; this packet gives only the count, not a modification flag. Loans, grants, and contracts can all sit in the $734,091,874,676.57 sum. The table is silent on kilowatt-hours produced or cleanup acres finished.

CGAC 089 is the Common Government-wide Accounting Classification code for DOE as awarding agency. The hub path /agencies/089/ is keyed to that identifier.

Obligations versus energy outlays

An obligation is a legal commitment. An outlay is cash paid. The $734,091,874,676.57 figure can include commitments that will pay out after FY 2026, especially on long lab and construction vehicles. Readers matching this page to a DOE budget appendix should expect the two publications to disagree in definition even when both are accurate.

Researchers sometimes treat an agency obligation total as cash already paid. For Department of Energy, that reading is wrong. A DOE budget-justification request, kilowatt-hour output, or classified weapons-line totals beyond the public file belong in other publications. The USAspending figure on this hub remains an obligation sum through FY 2026. Lab-contract modifications inside FY 2026 can move a thin file’s mean quickly.

State coding for Energy awards

Place-of-performance on DOE awards often follows lab and site locations. A management-and-operating contract coded to one state can dominate that state’s cell of the $734,091,874,676.57 total. The state table is a geography of award coding, not a household energy-subsidy map. The parent population remains 17,651 awards through FY 2026.

Place-of-performance is a coding field, not a complete economic-impact model. On this agency, management-and-operating contracts coded to lab states can dominate geography cells. Read the state table after the agency hub, not instead of it. Stay on CGAC 089; do not look for a three-digit shortcut that is not this hub.

How DOE sits on the all-agencies list

Compare $734,091,874,676.57 and 17,651 awards only with other obligation totals from this extract. An agency with millions of awards and a similar dollar total is running a different instrument mix. Neither rank is a score of scientific output.

The all-agencies list is useful only inside this extract’s obligation definition and FY 2026 cap. 17,651 rows against $734,091,874,676.57 imply laboratory-scale and construction vehicles rather than mass small purchases. Ranking on dollars alone hides that mix. Stay on CGAC 089; do not look for a three-digit shortcut that is not this hub.

Reading a thin, high-dollar Energy file

With only 17,651 awards carrying $734,091,874,676.57, a handful of rows can explain much of the book. The mean near $41.6 million is expected in that mix. It is not evidence that small vendors are absent; it is evidence that large vehicles dominate the average.

USAspending.gov remains the source. SpendingVault does not add classified annexes. If a program is missing, it may be absent from the public award file rather than zero. The FY 2026 cap is the latest year on the packet. CGAC 089 is the awarding-agency identifier on every row in this rollup, and the overlay path stays /agencies/089/. The award population is 17,651 records. Those rows still sum to the same obligation total through fiscal year 2026. Readers who need place-of-performance should open the state table from that hub; readers who need peer context should open the all-agencies list. Neither view converts obligations into outlays.

Questions

How much has the Department of Energy obligated through FY 2026?

DOE awarding-agency records (CGAC 089) sum to $734,091,874,676.57 in this USAspending extract. That obligation total covers 17,651 awards through fiscal year 2026. The figure is not an annual appropriations request and not a Treasury outlay.

Why does DOE have so few awards relative to its dollars?

The 17,651 count is the number of award records tagged to CGAC 089. Large laboratory and construction vehicles can each carry a substantial share of the $734,091,874,676.57 book. A low row count with a high dollar total is a size-mix fact, not a finding about waste or efficiency.

What is CGAC 089?

CGAC 089 is the USAspending awarding-agency code for the Department of Energy. SpendingVault’s DOE hub uses that code in the URL. The $734,091,874,676.57 obligation total and 17,651 award count are rollups of rows carrying 089 through FY 2026.

Where can I see DOE spending by state?

The state table linked from the CGAC 089 agency page splits the same obligation extract by place of performance. Those geography rows still sit under $734,091,874,676.57 and 17,651 awards through FY 2026 and can be dominated by a handful of site-coded contracts.