The Biden administration’s green loan office is shelling out nearly $23 billion to utility companies for green energy development and other projects in its final days.
The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO) announced its conditional commitment to provide a combined $22.9 billion in financing to numerous utility companies across the country to “modernize” their grid systems by adding new green energy generation, building transmission lines needed to harness renewable generation and more. The LPO is continuing its lame duck lending spree through the very end of the Biden administration, even though Republicans and the DOE’s internal watchdog have called for a freeze on LPO activity due to concerns about the office’s safeguards pertaining to conflicts of interest.
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LPO is offering Michigan’s DTE Electric and DTE Gas $9 billion to develop more green energy generation and replace gas lines, while Alliant Energy and its subsidiaries have been offered $3 billion to incorporate more wind power and batteries into its grid. Other companies that LPO extended loan packages to include PacifiCorp — which will look to use the money to build 700 miles of new transmission lines — and New Jersey’s Jersey Central Power and Light.
“On January 16, 2025, LPO announced eight conditional commitments through its Title 17 Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment (EIR) program, comprising $22.92 billion to utilities serving more than 14.78 million customers across 12 states,” LPO said of the offers announced Thursday. “Projects supported by today’s announcements include transmission, clean generation, energy storage, grid modernization, and gas pipeline investments. By accessing LPO’s lowest-cost debt, these utilities will incur lower financing costs for their qualifying infrastructure projects than if they had used commercial capital markets, and they will pass along the savings to customers.”
President-elect Donald Trump campaigned aggressively against taxpayer-funded subsidies for green energy development. While the loan offers announced Thursday will likely not be finalized before Trump is sworn in, it could be difficult for Trump to walk them back because the conditional commitment is binding so long as recipients are meeting established benchmarks to unlock the funding, according to The New York Times.
LPO has been busy finalizing and offering loans prior to Thursday’s developments, including a $1.36 billion package to EnergySource Minerals and a $1.45 billion loan for Hanwha Q Cells to help build a factory in Georgia The Biden administration put new life into LPO — which was comparatively quiet during Trump’s first term — upon taking office in 2021, supercharging it with hundreds of billions of dollars to use in pursuit of standing up a robust domestic green energy sector.
The DOE did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
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