A flurry of news on US Department of Energy (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO) project loans could show a rush to get deals done before Trump’s administration takes office, and a DOE spokesperson tells Energy-Storage.news it would be “irresponsible” to withdraw support for projects now.
The DOE’s LPO, headed up by Jigar Shah and holding US$400 billion of loan authority, has financed some of the US’ most high-profile clean energy projects in the past four years under the Biden-Harris administration.
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In response to a request for clarification that all LPO loans which have been announced are safe, and what the change in administration in January 2025 might mean for those applications that haven’t been approved yet, a DOE spokesperson told Energy-Storage.news:
“DOE’s LPO has provided a bridge to bankability for American entrepreneurs and innovators for almost 20 years. Utilising funding provided by Congress, LPO has accomplished tremendous progress in a short amount of time on bipartisan priorities including advanced nuclear, geothermal, advanced fossil energy, and critical minerals. As a result, there is steel in the ground and job openings at new or expanded facilities around the country.”
“It would be irresponsible for any government to turn its back on private sector partners, states, and communities that are benefiting from lower energy costs and new economic opportunities spurred by LPO’s investments.”
The medium- and long-term implications of Trump’s win on the clean energy industry, specifically vis-a-vis tariffs and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), have been explored by Energy-Storage.news and our sister site PV Tech. But the question of LPO loans that have yet to be approved or finalised might be a nearer-term worry for the industry, if a trio of announcements on loan progress for Li-Cycle, NeoVolta and Eos are anything to go by.
It has issued US$25.07 billion in 16 conditional commitments for US projects or manufacturing from companies including zinc battery firm Eos Energy Enterprises, lithium-ion cell and BESS manufacturer KORE Power and battery recycler Redwood Materials, as well as minerals for battery production.
Its finalised loans total around US$12 billion, including to recyler Li-Cycle, Puerto Rico solar-and-storage project AES Marahu, California microgrid Viejas Microgrid, lithium-ion gigafactory firm Ultium Cells, green hydrogen project ACES Delta and a large distributed energy resource (DER) and virtual power plant (VPP) scheme from Sunnova. The majority of the other five projects are in electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing or battery material mining or processing.
The LPO currently has around US$300 billion of loan applications across renewable energy generation, energy storage, nuclear, clean energy technology manufacturing including batteries and energy-efficiency and grid modernisation projects.
EIR budget goes up
In a possibly related move, the LPO has announced that it is increasing the loan authority for its Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment (EIR or Section 1706) programme to US$244.8 billion, one of five programmes into which its loans are categorised. EIR finances projects, typically via loan guarantees, that improve or enable energy infrastructure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).
The LPO has, after gaining a better understanding of potential applications, reduced the risk profile of the typical, utility-led, multi-technology projects that EIR supports, allowing it to increasing the loan authority to ‘reflect the statutory maximum loan guarantee authority’ minus amounts already obligated – leading to a total of US$244.8 billion.
Outlets have speculated that this indicates a potential rush of green loans before the change in administration.
This section on the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment (EIR) budget increase was added to this article shortly after publication.
