Biden inks billion-dollar climate deals to foil Trump rollbacks

One of President Joe Biden’s signature climate initiatives is on the clock.

The Department of Energy is racing to close $25 billion in pending loans to businesses building major clean energy projects across the country. The push is one of Biden’s last chances to cement his climate legacy before President-elect Donald Trump takes office next year under the promise of shredding Democratic spending programs.

The department’s Loan Programs Office emerged as one of Biden’s most potentially powerful tools for greening the economy, making billion-dollar deals to restart a nuclear power plant in Michigan, fund lithium mining in Nevada, and build factories for churning out electric vehicle components in Ohio and Tennessee.

But it faces an uncertain future under Trump, who as president backed only one project under the program and proposed slashing the office’s budget. And Trump’s recent pick to lead DOE, Chris Wright, is a fracking executive who has criticized the use of “large government subsidies and mandates.”

That sets up a high-wire act in the closing weeks of Biden’s presidency — both for DOE and for energy companies seeking a financial lifeline from Washington.

Of the 29 loans and loan guarantees the administration has announced, 16 have yet to be completed. They include $9.2 billion for an EV battery project in Kentucky and Tennessee, a $1.5 billion guarantee for sustainable aviation fuel production in South Dakota, and $1 billion for electric vehicle charging infrastructure nationwide.

“There’s nothing like seeing your own coffin to get you moving faster,” said Andy Marsh, president and CEO of the hydrogen company Plug Power, which hopes to close a $1.7 billion loan from DOE.

Plug Power produces electrolyzers and other components needed to make hydrogen from electricity, a zero-emissions source of energy that could take a hit under Trump. The DOE loan would provide funding to help the company build up to six “green hydrogen” plants.

Marsh said he’s aiming to lock in the loan guarantee “before Jan. 20th” — when Trump will be inaugurated.

“We know that it’s in our best interest to have that resolved by then,” he said.

The pending loans, some of which were announced almost two years ago, preview a potential fight under Trump: pitting efforts to reduce U.S. dependence on Chinese imports against Republicans’ desire to cut spending. The loans stem from Biden’s wider effort to spur a green building boom to erode China’s clean energy dominance and slash planet-warming pollution.

Twelve pending loans and loan guarantees worth a combined $21 billion are in Republican congressional districts, according to a POLITICO review. The department also has a pile of 210 active applications, totaling $303.5 billion, as of October. The office recently adjusted its estimated remaining loan authority to nearly $400 billion across several programs — leaving hundreds of billions of dollars available for the incoming Trump administration should it seek to use the office.

“First question you ask, what’s obligated, what’s not obligated,” said Mark Menezes, who served as deputy Energy secretary during Trump’s first term, referring to committed financing that would be harder for the future president to cancel. He anticipates that the Biden team will try to close the loans in the coming weeks.

“It’s easier to explain a finalized loan and what it is being used for, as opposed to a conditional loan,” Menezes said. “What’s holding it up? Why isn’t it getting across the finish line? Those are fair questions.”

Other former staffers of the lending office expect the administration to expedite the completion of loans in the waning weeks of Biden’s presidency.

“For the projects that are ready, it would probably do them well to prioritize the projects that they want to move forward that they don’t think a Trump administration would,” said Kennedy Nickerson, a former policy adviser at the loan office who is now a vice president of energy at Capstone, an investment research firm.

Brendan Bell, chief operating officer at Aligned Climate Capital and former director of strategic initiatives at the loans office under former President Barack Obama, predicted that the Biden administration will “work to the wire” to close its conditional commitments.

“I don’t expect their work to stop. But then the real question is, what happens after that?” he said.

‘We are scared about it’

The Loan Programs Office was established in 2005 to provide funding for emerging energy technologies that have difficulty attracting private capital. It had some notable successes.

The office awarded $465 million to Tesla Motors in 2010, helping to turn Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company into an industry giant. Musk, a prominent Trump supporter during the campaign, will have a role in the new administration giving him authority to propose deep cuts to federal spending and the government workforce.

But the program is perhaps best known for a loan guarantee that failed. In 2009, the office backed a $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra, a solar manufacturer that later went bankrupt. Republicans lambasted the program as an example of wasteful liberal spending. Loans slowed to a trickle.

Later, the first Trump administration closed one deal through the office, guaranteeing $3.7 billion in financing for the construction of a nuclear reactor in Georgia. Menezes, who was deputy Energy secretary at the time, said the Trump administration tried to advance several other loans, only to be met by internal resistance from career staffers who were unsettled by the Solyndra experience.

The loan office has been anything but sleepy under Biden. He tapped Jigar Shah, a prominent clean energy entrepreneur who co-hosted a popular energy podcast, to lead the office.

Shah quickly became a leading voice for the administration on energy issues, talking up the department’s ability to confront the so-called valley of death that prevented cutting-edge companies from obtaining private financing. Earlier this year, Time magazine named Shah one of the 100 most influential people of 2024.

“The Biden administration had a completely different view of the LPO, and when they came in they took some structural moves that made the office more responsive to loan applications,” Menezes said. “The department has changed significantly since the time we were over there.”

Shah, in a tweet this week, highlighted how DOE has transformed under Biden to become “a commercialization engine.”

Altogether, the office has announced roughly $37 billion in loans or loan guarantees for 29 projects during Biden’s tenure. It has finalized financing for 12 of them, worth roughly $12 billion. Two of them were completed after the election.

Another 16 projects have received conditional commitments for loans or guarantees worth just over $25 billion — an amount the administration is racing to finish before Biden leaves office. An additional project that received a conditional award is listed as inactive. The incoming Trump administration could rip up unfinished loans or put a moratorium on further action, some proponents of the office fear.

“We are scared about it,” said Nalin Gupta, founder and CEO of Wabash Valley Resources, which received a conditional commitment for a nearly $1.6 billion loan guarantee in September to install a carbon capture and sequestration system on an ammonia facility at the site of a former coal plant in Indiana. The project — which supports a technology long embraced by Republicans — underwent initial review during Trump’s first term, giving the company some confidence the loan would be approved under the future White House.

But Gupta added: “We have been on this journey for eight years, and we just got our conditional approval. We were almost celebrating, but I’ve learned each time I celebrate it lasts for this long before something comes up.”

‘Within our control’

The first Trump administration sought to slash the office’s budget. And Project 2025 — the conservative road map that Trump tried to distance himself from before the election — has called for halting new loans and eventually eliminating the office.

Analysts said it is unclear how Trump would approach the office. His administration could take a favorable view of loans for long-standing Republican priorities such as carbon capture, as well as projects that reduce dependency on China, they said.

But Trump has vowed to make deep cuts to federal spending through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to be led by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate and pharmaceutical entrepreneur.

“Too much bureaucracy = less innovation & higher costs,” Ramaswamy said Friday on X, pointing to “countless 3-letter agencies.”

“They are utterly agnostic to how their daily decisions stifle new inventions & impose costs that deter growth,” he added.

Wright, Trump’s pick to lead DOE, has argued there is “no energy transition happening now,” and his company published a 180-page report this year asserting that tax credits and expenditures under the Democrats’ climate law would reduce investment in other areas.

“We cannot let the Inflation Reduction Act enfeeble our energy system,” the paper said.

Wright has backed low-carbon technologies like geothermal and nuclear. His company, Liberty Energy, is partnering on a geothermal project with Fervo Energy and a next-generation nuclear project with Oklo, which designs small modular reactors.

Shah highlighted how the loan office and other DOE programs would finance geothermal and nuclear energy.

“At the end of the day, the secretary of Energy signs off on these loans,” said Bell, who worked in the loan office under Obama.

In a note to clients, the consultancy Capstone said deals under the office that have attracted Republican criticism or that have ties to Chinese companies are most at risk of not succeeding.

It listed the $1.7 billion loan to Plug Power, a $1 billion loan to EVgo for EV charging infrastructure and an $850 million loan to KORE Power for battery manufacturing in Arizona as being in jeopardy. Plug Power has attracted criticism from Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, for its relationship with Shah. Shah was working at Generate Capital in 2019 when the clean energy investment firm lent $100 million to Plug Power.

Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump transition team, said in a statement that Trump was elected with a mandate to deliver on his campaign promises.

Trump repeatedly called for cutting Biden’s climate and energy policies, including rescinding unspent funds from the Inflation Reduction Act. The law created a new program under the LPO and provided it with about $11.7 billion in funding.

The Biden administration signaled that it won’t let the loans die without a fight. A DOE spokesperson pointed to the office’s efforts to advance projects on nuclear energy, carbon capture and critical minerals, noting that they have bipartisan appeal.

“There is steel in the ground and job openings at new or expanded facilities around the country,” Jeremy Ortiz said in a statement. “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.”

Many business executives have sought to project confidence that their projects will be completed before Trump arrives. EVgo CEO Badar Khan told investors he doesn’t expect “a lengthy process to close the loan.”

“The conditions are at this point largely within our control,” Khan added.

Mallory Cooke, a spokesperson for BlueOval SK, which received a $9.2 billion conditional loan commitment to help build battery factories in Kentucky and Tennessee, said the consortium is “working with our partners at the Department of Energy on final loan approval and will share details upon conclusion of that process.” The project is expected to start producing EV batteries in 2025, Cooke said.

Eos Energy Enterprises, meanwhile, has made “significant progress” toward closing a $398 million loan for a battery factory outside Pittsburgh, CEO Joe Mastrangelo told investors recently.

The loans office has picked up the pace in recent months. Of the 12 loans finalized by the office under Biden, seven have been completed since September.

The office has continued to announce new conditional commitments. In October alone, it announced conditional deals for the sustainable aviation producer Gevo ($1.46 billion), the low-carbon fuels maker Montana Renewables ($1.44 billion) and the battery component maker Aspen Aerogels ($671 million), as well as the $1.05 billion for EVgo.

The Loan Programs Office has shown it can move fast. The first loan closed by the Biden administration, a $504 million deal for a hydrogen production and storage facility in Utah, was completed 43 days after the conditional deal was announced. But the average loan took 221 days between the conditional and final announcements.

Some of the pending deals have lingered for years. Monolith Nebraska has been waiting for nearly three years on a $1.04 billion loan guarantee for a clean hydrogen production facility in Nebraska. Redwood Materials has waited almost two years on a $2 billion loan for a battery recycling and production facility in Nevada. The developers of Rhyolite Ridge have been waiting for almost two years for a $700 million loan for a lithium and boron mine in Nevada.

All three companies declined to comment or didn’t respond to inquiries. But in October, Bernard Rowe, managing partner of Ioneer, the company behind Rhyolite Ridge, told POLITICO that he’s “not concerned about whether or not we’ll get there.” The loan was contingent on the company receiving an environmental permit for the mine, he said. The project received its permit shortly thereafter.

Developers of projects in the pipeline hope Trump will take a different approach than he did during his first term — particularly because most of the projects are in GOP districts.

“It’d be really hard for them to just sit on 200 applications worth $300-plus billion and not have anybody with really good ties to the Republican Party make a stink about it,” said Nickerson, the Capstone analyst.

Geography is likely to be an important factor in the Trump administration’s considerations, said Heather Reams, executive director of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, a center-right nonprofit that advocates for clean energy.

“These are states that are important to the Republican demographics,” she said. “I think the members of Congress representing those states can make the case that it’s important to their districts, and those members are also likely important to the president-elect.”

But others said geographic considerations only go so far, particularly when Republicans will be looking for ways to pay for a multitrillion-dollar extension of the tax cuts enacted in Trump’s first term.

Lobbying from Republican lawmakers might save some projects, but “I expect the number to be few,” said Mary Anne Sullivan, senior counsel at Hogan Lovells who served as DOE general counsel during the Clinton administration.

The loans office has not been particularly popular with the GOP in the past, she noted.

“I expect them to be better at executing their objectives this time round,” Sullivan said of the Republicans. “If their objective is to let this program die a natural death, that would not be hard to accomplish.”