DOE’s Conflict of Interest and Commitment Rule Is Now in Force

On July 16, 2026, the Department of Energy published a final rule creating a new subpart C of 2 CFR part 910 that requires every institution applying for or holding a DOE financial assistance award to maintain a written, enforced conflict of interest and conflict of commitment policy meeting federally specified criteria. The rule took effect on August 17, 2026 (91 FR 43511; Docket DOE-HQ-2024-0029; RIN 1991-AC18).

The substance will look familiar to anyone who administers Public Health Service awards — DOE deliberately built the rule to sit close to the PHS financial conflict of interest regulations at 42 CFR part 50, subpart F. What is not familiar is the schedule. Twenty-one commenters, including a joint submission from the Association of American Universities, the Council on Governmental Relations and the Association of Public & Land-grant Universities, asked DOE for a one-year lead time to rewrite institutional policy. DOE gave thirty days.

What the rule actually requires

New 2 CFR 910.230 requires any non-Federal entity applying to or receiving a DOE financial assistance award to hold a written policy covering actual, apparent and potential conflicts — both conflict of interest and conflict of commitment, foreign and domestic. The policy has to be produced within five business days of any request for it. Beyond that, the policy must:

Name a designated official to solicit and review disclosures from every covered individual, and to decide what management, reduction or elimination steps are required. The rule lists seven example remedies, from public disclosure of the conflict through to severing the relationship that creates it.

Collect disclosures no later than the point of application — not at award, not at set-up. Where a covered individual is added after application, the disclosure must come before that person participates in the project.

Require updates annually and within 15 days of any new actual, apparent or potential conflict arising. This is the tightest deadline in the rule: the analogous PHS requirement at 42 CFR 50.604(e)(3) allows thirty days.

Require a signed, dated certification in the form set out in appendix A to the subpart.

Require training before a covered individual engages in a DOE-funded project, with refresher training at least every two years, plus training within 30 days whenever the institution revises its policy in a way affecting covered individuals, whenever a covered individual is new to the institution, or whenever the institution finds a covered individual out of compliance.

Cover sponsored and reimbursed travel, at minimum capturing purpose, sponsor or organiser, destination and duration.

Include enforcement mechanisms and sanctions.

The definitions do the work

Two definitions in 2 CFR 910.200 carry most of the compliance weight.

Significant financial interest uses the same $5,000 aggregation threshold institutions already apply under PHS rules: for a publicly traded entity, remuneration received in the preceding twelve months plus equity held at the date of disclosure, aggregated, exceeding $5,000; for a non-publicly traded entity, remuneration over $5,000 or any equity interest at all. Intellectual property rights count once income is received. Sponsored travel counts unless it is paid by a US federal, state or local government agency, a domestic institution of higher education, or a domestic research institute affiliated with one. The carve-outs also mirror PHS: institutional salary, mutual funds and retirement accounts the individual does not direct, and income from government or domestic-university seminars and review panels are all excluded.

Conflict of commitment is where the DOE rule reaches further than most institutional policies currently do. The regulatory definition names, as examples that may give rise to a COC: current or pending employment; positions, appointments or affiliations including titled academic, professional or institutional appointments — adjunct, visiting or honorary, paid or unpaid, full-time or part-time; and participation in or applications to foreign government-sponsored talent recruitment programmes or similar. It also treats obligations to improperly share information with, or withhold information from, an employer or DOE as a conflicting obligation.

AAU and its co-signatories asked DOE to strip the examples out of the regulatory text and put them in guidance, and specifically to drop the reference to pending employment — arguing that institutions cannot realistically identify a researcher’s plans to seek another job. DOE kept both. Its stated reasoning: examples in regulatory text “facilitates compliance and avoids the need to consult multiple sources,” and to the extent pending employment produces an actual, apparent or potential conflict, the covered individual is already obliged to report it.

Who counts as a covered individual

The rule defines a covered individual as someone who both contributes in a substantive, meaningful way to the scope of work and is designated as a covered individual by DOE. DOE then designates, categorically: any PI, project director, co-PI, co-project director, project manager, anyone functionally performing those roles regardless of title, and anyone named in the applicable notice of funding opportunity or award terms. Critically, the rule states that submitting a current-and-pending support disclosure or a biosketch for a person “serves as an acknowledgement that DOE designates that person as a covered individual.” That is a broader net than a literal reading of the two-part definition suggests, and it is worth reading alongside the parallel concept in NSPM-33’s covered individual definition.

Reporting to DOE, and what happens when it goes wrong

Under 2 CFR 910.240, an institution must disclose to DOE in writing any conflict it cannot eliminate or appropriately manage. Separately — and regardless of whether it has been managed — it must disclose any conflict involving foreign governments, their instrumentalities, or entities owned, funded or otherwise controlled by a foreign government, together with the measures taken. Where a conflict has been reported on an ongoing project, an annual COI/COC report is required for the duration of the project period, including no-cost extensions, stating whether the conflict is still managed, remains unmanageable, or no longer exists.

DOE reserves the right to inquire into any covered individual’s disclosures at any time — before, during or after an award — whether or not the institution concluded a conflict existed, and to require submission or on-site review of all pertinent records. The rule names specific triggers for demanding the underlying disclosures, including bankruptcy, legal winding-down, and acquisition of the institution by a foreign entity.

Remedies for failure run from requiring mitigation, through disqualifying an entity or individual from part or all of an award, to rejecting an application or terminating the award outright. Where an institution learns a covered individual has breached its policy or a management plan, it must promptly notify DOE in writing of the failure and the corrective action taken.

Organisational conflicts get their own, tighter clock: 2 CFR 910.260 requires written disclosure of any potential or actual organisational conflict of interest to DOE within 15 business days of learning of it, with a prescribed five-part content requirement.

Subrecipients

The rule pushes down the chain. A recipient must, in a written agreement, establish whether its own COI/COC policy or the subrecipient’s applies to the subrecipient’s covered individuals. If the subrecipient’s policy applies, the subrecipient must certify in that agreement that its policy complies with subpart C — and if it cannot certify, the agreement must instead subject its covered individuals to the recipient’s policy. The agreement must also specify time periods for the subrecipient to report conflicts up to the recipient, sufficient for the recipient to meet its own DOE reporting deadlines. Pass-through entities should read this against their existing subrecipient monitoring obligations under 2 CFR 200.

What research administrators should do now

Check whether your existing PHS-aligned policy actually covers conflict of commitment. Many institutional FCOI policies built for NIH address financial interests thoroughly and treat commitment separately, in faculty handbooks or outside-activity policies, if at all. DOE requires a single written policy addressing both, producible in five business days.

Reconcile the 15-day update clock. If your disclosure system is configured to the PHS 30-day standard, DOE-funded covered individuals now sit under a shorter deadline. Running two clocks in one system is a configuration problem worth solving before the first annual report is due.

Audit your training cadence against the three 30-day triggers. Refresher COI training every two years is the baseline, but the policy-revision, new-hire and non-compliance triggers each require training within 30 days — a workflow requirement, not just a curriculum one.

Update subaward templates. The certification-or-flow-down choice in 910.230(c) needs to be a standard clause, not a case-by-case negotiation.

Map the disclosure point to application, not award. The rule requires disclosures in hand before the application goes to DOE, which for many offices means moving the collection point earlier in the proposal workflow.

Institutions that already run a mature NSPM-33-aligned research security programme will find much of the foreign-affiliation and talent-programme reporting familiar; the newer work is the domestic conflict-of-commitment coverage and the compressed timelines.

What remains uncertain

Several things are genuinely unresolved.

The codified section number for the remedies provision is inconsistent in the published rule. The section-by-section analysis and table of contents refer to “Sec. 910.270 Remedies, Penalties, and Enforcement,” but the regulatory text as printed at 91 FR 43523 is headed “Sec. 920.270.” Institutions citing the provision in policy documents should check the current eCFR text rather than the Federal Register print, and watch for a technical correction.

DOE has not said how program offices will use their tailoring authority. The rule expressly allows program offices to tailor COI, COC and OCI provisions for individuals applying in their individual capacity, and allows a notice of funding opportunity or award terms to require disclosure of all covered individuals’ conflicts — including those the institution determined were appropriately managed. Whether that becomes routine in DOE NOFOs or stays exceptional is not yet observable.

The alignment question the universities raised is unresolved rather than answered. DOE’s position is that the rule is substantively similar to PHS and does not conflict with it. The commenters’ position was that the differences — in the COI definition’s construction, in the retention of examples in regulatory text, and in the disclosure timeline — force costly realignment of institutional policy. Both can be true. What is not yet known is whether other agencies implementing the same OMB guidance and CHIPS and Science Act obligations converge on DOE’s formulation or on the PHS one.

Enforcement posture is untested. The rule has been in effect for less than a fortnight at the time of writing, and it largely codifies requirements DOE has enforced since 2022 through award terms and conditions under Financial Assistance Letter 2022-02. Whether codification changes DOE’s willingness to use the termination and disqualification remedies is an open question.

Frequently asked questions

Does the DOE rule replace our PHS conflict of interest policy?

No. It is a separate requirement applying to DOE financial assistance awards. DOE built it to be substantively similar to the PHS regulations at 42 CFR part 50 subpart F, and states the two do not conflict, but the DOE rule adds a conflict-of-commitment component and a shorter update deadline. Most institutions will need either a single policy that satisfies the stricter of the two on each point, or clearly scoped parallel policies.

When did the rule take effect, and was there a transition period?

It took effect on August 17, 2026, thirty days after publication. There was no transition period. DOE declined the one-year lead time requested by the University of California and by AAU, COGR and APLU jointly, on the grounds that the final rule largely codifies requirements already applicable to DOE awards since 2022 under the interim policy in Financial Assistance Letter 2022-02, which subpart C now supersedes.

Does the rule apply to every DOE grant recipient?

It applies to any non-Federal entity applying to or receiving a DOE financial assistance award on or after August 17, 2026, and to each non-Federal entity subrecipient. There are two exceptions: applications and awards under the programs of the DOE Office of Indian Energy are excluded entirely, and for an individual applying or receiving an award in their individual capacity, the requirements may be tailored by the applicable DOE program office.

What is the difference between a conflict of interest and a conflict of commitment under this rule?

A conflict of interest under 2 CFR 910.200 turns on a significant financial interest or financial relationship — held by the covered individual, their spouse or their child, foreign or domestic — that could directly and significantly affect the design, conduct, reporting or funding of the project. A conflict of commitment turns on conflicting obligations rather than money: competing commitments of time and effort across multiple employers or entities, and obligations to improperly share or withhold information. An unpaid honorary appointment carries no financial interest but can still create a conflict of commitment.

Primary sources: Department of Energy, “Financial Assistance Regulations—Conflict of Interest and Conflict of Commitment Policy Requirements,” final rule, 91 FR 43511 (July 16, 2026), Docket DOE-HQ-2024-0029, RIN 1991-AC18, effective August 17, 2026; DOE notice of proposed rulemaking, 89 FR 51460 (June 18, 2024); 42 CFR 50.604(e)(3) (PHS thirty-day disclosure update requirement), as in force per eCFR title 42 as of August 20, 2026.

Related reading: DOE Award Search — DOE-funded research grants are found through PAMS Award Search (DOE Office of Science awards specifically) and USAspending.gov (DOE awards department-wide) — there is no single department-wide DOE award database like NIH RePORTER or NSF Award Search.