A leading conservative group is recommending a hatchet be taken to the Energy Department by shifting more than half of its duties to the Pentagon and leaving it in control of only cybersecurity for the electric grid.

The Heritage Foundation, in releasing its 2017 "blueprint" for the next administration, is suggesting a proposal that has been considered for years, but never acted upon, to move the Energy Department's nuclear weapons and Cold-War cleanup programs to the Department of Defense.

The Obama administration's Office of Management and Budget made a similar proposal during the White House transition soon after Obama was sworn in. A federal memo from the White House in early 2009 called on the Defense and Energy departments to work out a plan to move the National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA, from the energy agency to the Pentagon.

The push was seen as a way to refocus the energy agency and its budget by freeing it from its Cold War legacy and weapons roles.

NNSA makes up a large chunk of the Energy Department's annual budget, even though it has little to do with energy and more to do with managing the nation's nuclear arsenal. It is separate from the agency's fossil, renewable, liquid fuels and nuclear energy research and development activities and funding. The department also runs a fleet of state-of-the-art research labs, which have national security and energy development capacities.

The memo asked the agencies to "assess the costs and benefits of transferring budget and management of NNSA or its components to DOD and elsewhere, as appropriate, beginning in [fiscal year] 2011." But strong backlash from top congressional Democrats over its effect on national labs killed the proposal. A similar idea was proposed in legislation introduced by Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-Mich., in the late 1990s. Abraham later went on to become President George W. Bush's first energy secretary.

Observers say the idea of dividing NNSA from the Energy Department is something that is kept on the shelf awaiting the right set of circumstances. Typically, transition periods are a good time to entertain proposals to restructure agencies, they say.

Heritage's new proposal recommends combining the previous idea with a nearly complete gutting of the Energy Department, which is probably one of the more extreme versions of the plan so far. The blueprint even appears to consider a military advisory board's findings from a decade ago that said the Defense Department could not handle managing the Energy Department's nuclear security arm.

Heritage's plan would allow the National Nuclear Security Administration to "operate as an autonomous agency and transfer any critical national security-related spending to the Department of Defense."

"Nonproliferation, naval nuclear propulsion and other national security priorities should remain under NNSA but as an autonomous agency," which would keep it a quasi-sovereign agency with limited requirements for the Defense Department to directly manage it.

But that's only the beginning. Heritage also wants the Energy Department's research and development and other programs to commercialize energy technologies to be significantly curtailed, with cybersecurity becoming its only function, according to the blueprint.

"Congress should limit government involvement in the electricity grid to activities related to meeting the government's cybersecurity requirements," according to the transition document. "Much of the grid investment and improved security can and should be driven by the private sector. Furthermore, Congress should halt NNSA programs that do not contribute directly to the country's nuclear weapons programs."

It calls for the elimination of the Energy Department's offices of Fossil Energy, Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, Electricity Deliverability and Reliable Energy, Nuclear Energy, the Loan Programs Office, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy. It also recommends that the next administration eliminate the agency's statistical and analysis arm, the Energy Information Administration, saying the services it provides can be readily found in the private sector.

"The blueprint calls for eliminating frivolous federal spending on energy projects that should be driven solely by private sector investment," said Nick Loris, energy and environment fellow at Heritage and author of the plan, in a blog post. "This means no more handouts for wind or solar or nuclear — or carbon-based fuels, for that matter."

The blueprint from the right-leaning think tank also recommends that the four federally run Power Marketing Administrations, such as the Bonneville Power Authority and the Southeastern Power Administration, that run the grids in large parts of the country, be privatized.

"None of these spending activities is a legitimate function of the federal government. Each is an inherent subsidy for the industry the government is supporting," the blueprint said. "Even research that is in the early stages of commercial readiness but has an end goal of improving the functionality of wind power or extracting natural resources more effectively should be left to the private sector."

Its call to eliminate the agency's loan office reflects the GOP's problems with the office over the two terms of Obama's presidency, which was brought to a head with a scandal involving the solar energy firm Solyndra that went bankrupt after receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in federal loan guarantees from the agency.

"Eliminating the Loan Programs Office would revoke any existing ability to administer government-backed loan or loan guarantees," Heritage said. All existing loan guarantees would be auctioned off by the agency to be managed by private banks, it added.

It also proposed to eliminate the Office of Science's spending on technology-specific research.

"The perception of spending within the Office of Science is that the federal government is allocating money to research that is basic and far removed from increasing the technological readiness of certain energy sources," but that is only partly true, the blueprint said. "Congress should eliminate all Office of Science spending on activities that are aimed at promoting specific energy sources and technologies."

Loris said reform in the next administration "should focus on shrinking the size and scope of federal intervention in the energy marketplace.

"This should begin by asking fundamental questions such as: Does America really need a Department of Energy?"