The University of Central Florida laid off 65 employees from its renewable energy research center, technology department and the arboretum.<\/p>\n
Last week, the university let go 57 professors, researchers and other employees from the Florida Solar Energy Center, a renewable energy research facility in Cocoa, on short notice.<\/p>\n
“UCF has made the difficult but necessary decision to reduce staffing at the Florida Solar Energy Center to ensure responsible stewardship of university and state resources,” the university wrote in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The layoff follows a substantial cut in federal funding by the Trump administration last month for 223 research projects<\/a>, which Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said were not “economically viable.”<\/p>\n “President Trump promised to protect taxpayer dollars and expand America’s supply of affordable, reliable and secure energy,” Wright\u00a0wrote in a release<\/a>.<\/p>\n The university confirmed that the FSEC, which was created by the Florida Legislature in 1975 to advance research in clean energy methods, now has only seven employees.\u00a0<\/p>\n The FSEC, defined as the state’s premier energy research institution, provides research on renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainable transpiration methods, energy education and more,\u00a0according to its website<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n UCF representatives said that the research was no longer sustainable due to “shifting federal priorities,” which Florida House Representative Anna Eskamani, a UCF alumna, said was counterproductive for the state.<\/p>\n “Florida has some of the greatest potential to move off fossil fuels and towards new and innovation sources of energy production,” Eskamani said in an email. “This decision is primarily based on the federal government’s shift away from renewable energy, a policy I do not support.”<\/p>\n