More than $56 million in Department of Energy (DOE) grants to 60 for-profit recipients—including billions of dollars under President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act—are not being audited as required by federal law because DOE isn’t obtaining regular reports on how the money is being spent, according to a government watchdog.
“We found that [DOE’s Office of] Science did not always ensure that for-profit grantees were compliant with audit regulations, including unaudited award expenditures, late audit report submissions, use of incorrect regulations or audit type, and incomplete reporting packages. These issues were due to Science lacking a system or tracking mechanism for monitoring grantees’ expenditures that may require an audit,” reported the DOE Inspector-General (IG)….