This bill directs the Secretary of Energy to fund projects that address deferred maintenance, critical infrastructure, and modernization needs across federally managed National Laboratories. It sets out the types of projects eligible for funding — from utilities and roads to research laboratories, user facilities, and computing capabilities — and requires DOE to submit project lists and funding profiles to Congress each year.
The legislation also amends the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to force tighter, office‑wide coordination inside DOE and to require a facilities strategy with a 10‑year planning horizon, preliminary funding estimates, and transparent prioritization criteria. For professionals tracking federal research infrastructure, the bill replaces ad‑hoc capital fixes with a recurring, reportable process that will reshape lab capital planning and budget requests.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill tasks the Secretary of Energy with funding specified restoration and modernization projects at National Laboratories and requires an annual submission of funded projects (with descriptions and funding profiles) to relevant congressional committees timed with the President’s budget. It also amends existing law to require department‑level facilities strategy and ten‑year planning.
Who It Affects
Directly affects the Department of Energy, the Office of Science, the National Laboratories (and their operators), congressional appropriations and science committees, construction and maintenance contractors, and scientific user communities that rely on lab facilities and user instruments.
Why It Matters
By creating a sustained, centralized funding stream and by mandating long‑range planning and transparency, the bill changes how capital decisions will be made for the national lab system, affecting research capacity, facility reliability, and future competitiveness in large‑scale science and computing.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill establishes a focused program inside DOE to address the labs’ backlog of aging infrastructure and to bring facilities up to the needs of modern science. It instructs the Secretary to select and fund projects that reduce deferred maintenance and that modernize core laboratory infrastructure needed for current and emerging science missions, including user facilities and computing platforms.
The list of eligible work is broad — buildings, utilities, power systems, roads, and other critical site infrastructure — and includes both sustainment and new construction tied to research missions.
To make spending visible to Congress and to force planning discipline, the bill requires DOE to transmit an annual list of projects the Secretary funds under the program. Those lists must include a description of each project and a funding profile, and they must be delivered to the Senate and House appropriations and science/energy committees at the same time the President’s budget is submitted.
That timing is intended to fold lab capital needs into the standard federal budget review cycle rather than treating them as one‑off add‑ons.The bill changes an existing statutory planning requirement by expanding which DOE offices must participate in facilities strategy and by demanding a formal strategy within a short deadline after enactment. The required strategy must lay out a current priority list, a 10‑year reconfiguration plan aligned with mission needs, preliminary estimates of the funding and resources required, and a description of the planning processes, metrics, and stakeholder engagement used to set priorities.
Those procedural requirements aim to increase transparency about how DOE evaluates projects and allocates capital across competing missions.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill authorizes annual appropriations of $5,000,000,000 for each fiscal year from 2026 through 2030 to carry out the restoration and modernization program.
At least one‑third of the annual authorized funding each fiscal year must be managed by the Office of Science.
The Secretary must submit, with the President’s budget each year, a list of projects funded under the program that includes a description of each project and a funding profile and deliver it to the Senate and House appropriations and relevant energy/science committees.
The bill amends section 993 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to expand the DOE offices participating in facilities strategy and requires the Secretary to deliver a departmentwide facilities strategy report not later than one year after enactment.
The required strategy must include a current priority list, a 10‑year plan for reconfiguring facilities to meet missions, a preliminary estimate of funding needed to execute that plan and how investments will be allocated across budgetary sources, and an explanation of the data, metrics, and stakeholder engagement used in planning.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Short title
Provides the bill’s short title: the Restore and Modernize Our National Laboratories Act of 2025. This is a formal label only; it does not impose substantive obligations beyond captioning.
Definitions and scope
Adopts the Energy Policy Act of 2005 definition of “National Laboratory” and defines “Secretary” as the Secretary of Energy. Anchoring to the existing statutory definition makes clear which facilities fall under the program and avoids creating a new category of labs.
DOE to fund deferred maintenance and modernization projects
Requires the Secretary to fund projects that reduce deferred maintenance and modernize laboratory infrastructure. The provision specifies eligible project types — priority deferred maintenance, lab upgrades, construction, utilities, roads, power plants, and other critical infrastructure — and links modernization explicitly to supporting emerging and existing science missions and environmental sustainability. It also requires DOE to report annually to specific congressional committees the projects funded and their funding profiles.
Authorizes multi‑year appropriations and Office of Science set‑aside
Authorizes multi‑year appropriations for the program (specified in the bill). Importantly, the statute requires a fixed portion of annual funds to be managed by the Office of Science, which affects internal allocation and program governance within DOE and privileges science mission priorities in at least part of the available pool.
Requires a coordinated, 10‑year facilities strategy
Modifies the existing facilities and infrastructure planning statute to add DOE offices by name to the planning process, change the framing of the statute toward cross‑office support for mission needs, and impose a short deadline (one year after enactment) for the Secretary to submit a detailed strategy. The strategy must include a current priority list, a 10‑year reconfiguration plan, preliminary funding estimates and allocation approach, and a description of planning processes, data, metrics, prioritization criteria, and stakeholder engagement.
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Explore Science in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Users of National Laboratory facilities and instruments — will gain more reliable access to modernized, mission‑aligned infrastructure as projects address aging facilities and targeted modernization needs.
- National Laboratories and their workforce — stand to receive capital improvements that reduce operational risk, lower deferred maintenance burdens, and improve safety and sustainability at lab sites.
- Large science programs and high‑performance computing communities — benefit from explicit modernization support intended to sustain and expand user facilities and computing capabilities critical to flagship research missions.
- Local economies and construction/engineering contractors — anticipate near‑term work from prioritized projects, creating jobs and local procurement opportunities tied to site upgrades.
- Office of Science — benefits administratively and programmatically from a designated share of program funds and clearer authority over science‑mission capital investments.
Who Bears the Cost
- Federal appropriations/taxpayers — the program depends on multi‑billion dollar annual appropriations over multiple years, increasing federal discretionary outlays if Congress funds the authorization.
- Department of Energy management — must create project selection and oversight processes, produce reports and a departmentwide strategy, and manage a large capital portfolio, adding administrative and program management burdens.
- Programs and offices within DOE not prioritized — could see funding diverted or deprioritized as multi‑billion dollar investments flow to high‑priority lab projects, shifting internal budget tradeoffs.
- National Laboratory contractors and site operators — must meet new project execution, reporting, and potentially environmental/compliance expectations tied to funded projects, which can increase administrative and compliance costs at the site level.
- Smaller research facilities or programs without visible capital needs — may struggle to compete for a large, centralized pool of funds focused on higher‑visibility infrastructure or flagship user facilities.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is balancing urgent, site‑level repairs with strategic investments that build future scientific capability: the bill channels large, centralized funds and demands long‑range planning to remedy both problems, but any finite pool forces a choice between fixing what’s unsafe and investing in new capabilities that determine long‑term scientific leadership — a trade‑off with no universally correct allocation.
The bill centralizes a large amount of capital funding and pairs it with planning and reporting requirements, but it leaves several implementation choices open. The statute requires project lists and a 10‑year plan but does not prescribe a transparent, objective scoring system for comparing projects across labs and missions.
That gap creates risk that allocations will reflect political or programmatic influence rather than strictly cost‑benefit or mission‑readiness criteria. The amendment asks for ‘‘metrics’’ and ‘‘stakeholder engagement’’ but gives DOE latitude on which metrics matter and who qualifies as a stakeholder, which will shape outcomes in practice.
Another practical tension concerns timing and project delivery. Large facility work often requires NEPA reviews, contracting lead time, and integrated cost estimates; the bill’s multi‑year authorization and annual reporting cadence push DOE to present credible funding profiles and schedules, but those profiles may be speculative.
If Congress appropriates less than the authorization or shifts timing, DOE will face partial projects and sunk planning costs. Finally, mandating a set‑aside managed by the Office of Science improves visibility for science missions but may complicate coordination with other DOE offices and the National Nuclear Security Administration, which have different authorities, security needs, and contracting models — mixing programmatic priorities across offices will require careful governance to avoid duplication, delay, or jurisdictional conflict.
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