Water Power Technologies Office Budget

WPTO Budget Over Time

Note: This graph shows annual appropriations and enacted funding only. This graph does not reflect the nearly $1B of Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funding for hydropower and marine energy.

FY 2026 Budget Appropriations for WPTO

On Friday, January 23, 2026, the President signed into law H.R. 6938, the “Commerce, Justice, Science; Energy and Water Development; and Interior and Environment Appropriations Act, 2026,” providing appropriations for several federal agencies for FY 2026. The law provides $220 million for the WPTO. This represents a 18% increase over the office’s prior year budget level and the office’s largest annual budget to date. Of the $220 million, Congress provided $79 million for hydropower and $141 million for marine energy. 

Within the appropriated funding, the agreement directed WPTO to: 

  • Enable industry-led research, development, demonstration, and deployment efforts of innovative technologies in hydropower and pumped storage.
  • Conduct a feasibility study and seek input from relevant stakeholders to establish a network of hydropower testing facilities.
  • Support innovative analytics to optimize hydropower applications, such as machine learning-based hydrologic forecasts and operations optimization.  
  • Continue foundational research activities led by the National Marine Renewable Energy Centers and affiliated universities and research institutions.
  • Address infrastructure needs at marine energy technology testing sites.
  • Initiate operations of the new grid-connected wave energy test facility, PacWave.
  • Create competitive solicitations to support university- and industry-led projects to rapidly design, fabricate, and test marine energy systems, subsystems, and components.
  • Sustain the Testing Expertise and Access for Marine Energy Research (TEAMER and the University Marine Energy Research Community (UMERC) programs.
  • Continue to leverage core capabilities at national laboratories, in partnership with universities and industry, to execute Powering the Blue Economy activities.