How much research funding does the Environmental Protection Agency receive?

EPA had about $535 million in R&D budget authority in fiscal year 2025.

EPA Budget History: Federal Funding 1975–2026

A note on what this chart shows: unlike most pages here, this series is the Environmental Protection Agency's whole budget, not just its research line. The research core is the Science and Technology account — the lab work behind air and water quality standards, chemical safety, and environmental monitoring — which sits inside a much larger agency budget that mostly funds regulation, cleanup, and grants to states.

The shape of the history is dramatic. In the late 1970s EPA's budget ballooned to about $16.7 billion in 2017 dollars (1978), inflated by enormous construction grants that built municipal sewage-treatment plants under the Clean Water Act. The early-1980s retrenchment cut it roughly in half, and since then the agency has lived between about $7 billion and $11 billion in 2017 dollars, with a visible bump around the 2009–2010 Recovery Act era.

Fiscal year 2025 came in at about $9.1 billion in current dollars — which, adjusted for inflation, is the agency's lowest level since 1976. The 2026 figure of $4.2 billion, a proposed cut of more than half, is the estimate from the White House budget request. The research core fared better than that topline suggests: Congress enacted the Science and Technology account at about $744 million for FY 2026, against a request of roughly $500 million. The budget-cycle section below has the breakdown.

The current budget cycle: FY 2026 enacted, FY 2027 requested

What Congress enacted for fiscal year 2026 and what the White House has requested for FY 2027, account by account. Budget authority in millions of dollars.

Account	FY 2026 enacted	FY 2027 request	Change
Clean Air	$139M	$121M	-12.5%
Sustainable Communities	$121M	$57M	-52.9%
Chemical Safety and Sustainability	$120M	$90M	-24.5%
Safe and Sustainable Water Resources	$108M	$78M	-28.2%
Air, Climate, and Energy	$96M	$33M	-65.8%
Homeland Security	$27M	$39M	+43.4%
Total Science & Technology	$744M	$508M	-31.7%

See the full appropriations tracker across every agency

Budget history

EPA's budget peaked in the late 1970s — swollen by clean-water construction grants — and its 2025 level is the lowest in real terms since 1976.

The EPA total agency budget, every fiscal year on record.

Millions of constant 2017 dollars — adjusted for inflationFY 2026: budget-request estimate

Source: AAAS Historical R&D Data · as of 2025-10-23

1978 — Clean-water construction grants. Sewage-treatment construction grants under the Clean Water Act balloon EPA's budget to its all-time real peak.
1981 — Early-1980s retrenchment. The construction-grant era ends and the budget falls by roughly half in real terms.
2010 — Recovery Act era. Stimulus-era funding produces a visible one-time bump.

See the numbers behind this chart

EPA total agency budget by fiscal year. Dollar values in millions; source AAAS Historical R&D Data.
Fiscal year	Nominal dollars	Constant 2017 dollars	R&D share of GDP
1975	699	2,601	—
1976	772	2,685	0.015%
1977	2,764	8,967	0.014%
1978	5,499	16,718	0.017%
1979	5,403	15,197	0.015%
1980	4,669	12,081	0.012%
1981	3,031	7,141	0.012%
1982	3,676	8,099	0.009%
1983	3,689	7,787	0.007%
1984	4,067	8,288	0.006%
1985	4,354	8,585	0.007%
1986	3,664	7,066	0.007%
1987	5,364	10,119	0.007%
1988	5,027	9,186	0.007%
1989	5,155	9,054	0.007%
1990	5,462	9,254	0.007%
1991	6,094	9,969	0.008%
1992	6,669	10,643	0.008%
1993	6,892	10,748	0.007%
1994	6,659	10,162	0.008%
1995	7,241	10,820	0.007%
1996	6,528	9,575	0.006%
1997	6,799	9,798	0.007%
1998	7,360	10,475	0.007%
1999	7,591	10,672	0.007%
2000	7,433	10,237	0.006%
2001	7,812	10,504	0.005%
2002	8,100	10,723	0.005%
2003	8,083	10,249	0.005%
2004	8,368	10,297	0.006%
2005	8,029	9,569	0.005%
2006	7,617	8,835	0.005%
2007	7,725	8,778	0.004%
2008	7,472	8,404	0.004%
2009	7,802	8,700	0.004%
2010	10,300	11,259	0.004%
2011	8,682	9,321	0.004%
2012	9,218	9,721	0.004%
2013	7,901	8,182	0.003%
2014	8,200	8,405	0.003%
2015	8,140	8,277	0.003%
2016	8,140	8,140	0.003%
2017	8,058	7,883	0.003%
2018	8,824	8,476	0.002%
2019	8,800	8,343	0.002%
2020	9,457	8,668	0.002%
2021	9,379	8,034	0.002%
2022	8,598	7,043	0.002%
2023	11,822	9,432	0.002%
2024	9,162	7,154	0.002%
2025	9,102	6,962	0.002%
2026est.	4,200	3,212	0.001%

Where the money goes

The Science and Technology account is the research core inside EPA's much larger overall budget.

The major EPA budget lines tracked by AAAS. These are appropriations accounts — they overlap the budget-history series but are not an exact decomposition of it.

Millions of constant 2017 dollars — adjusted for inflationFY 2026: budget-request estimateScience & Technology