The US Department of Energy (DOE) is cancelling or revising up to US$83 billion in clean energy loans as it shifts its resources to fossil fuel and nuclear projects.
The department last week revealed that it was in the process of “de-obligating” US$30 billion of loans for clean energy projects and revising a further US$53 billion made by the erstwhile Loan Progams Office (LPO).
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The DOE also confirmed that the LPO had now been renamed the Office of Energy Dominance Financing (EDF) and will focus on six core areas encompassing nuclear, fossil fuels, grid infrastructure and critical minerals. Solar and wind are conspicuous in their absence from a briefing note published last Thursday outlining the newly branded EDF’s remit.
The DOE’s overhaul of the former LPO’s loans follows a year-long review by EDF of the US$104 billion of financing committed during the four years of the former Biden administration.
The department claimed around US$85 billion of these loans had been “rushed out of the door” after Donald Trump’s second-term election victory last November.
It said EDF had completed or was in the process of de-obligating US$30 billion of the loans, with the other US$53 billion under revision.
A statement on the move provided no details on the projects that would be losing funding or on how those under revision would be revised. But it said the EDF had already “eliminated” around US$9.5 billion in “government-subsidised, intermittent wind and solar projects” and was “replacing them with investments in natural gas and nuclear uprates that provide more affordable and reliable energy for the American people”.
According to the DOE, the EDF has US$289 billion in available loan authority, and has already closed three loans, including one to a nuclear restart project in Pennsylvania and another to a coal and ammonia fertiliser facility in Indiana.
Energy secretary Chris Wright said: “Over the past year, the Energy Department individually reviewed our entire loan portfolio to ensure the responsible investment of taxpayer dollars. We found more dollars were rushed out the door of the Loan Programs Office in the final months of the Biden Administration than had been disbursed in over fifteen years.”
