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The Department of Energy made an unprecedented number of loans to ambitious clean energy projects throughout the Biden administration. Now the fate of that financing is uncertain amid President Trump’s ongoing attacks on federal climate and clean energy spending.
Under Biden, the DOE’s Loan Programs Office issued a total of 53 loans and loan guarantees worth over $107 billion. They went to large-scale projects including electric-vehicle factories from Ford and Rivian, the restart of the Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan, and facilities that produce sustainable aviation fuel. The map below, based on public DOE data compiled on January 17 and shared with Canary Media, shows LPO loans by status for projects where geographic data is available. See the data table at the end of this article for more information on all projects that received LPO loans.
It’s unclear how the Trump administration will treat these loans.
LPO’s new director, John Sneed, is exploring whether it’s legally viable to cancel existing loans made by the office, per reporting from Bloomberg.
About 44% of the LPO financing announced under Biden — nearly $47 billion — is currently in the conditional phase, meaning it’s unfinalized and still subject to negotiations with the federal government. A big question mark hangs over these conditional loan commitments, though even finalized loans could be targeted for clawbacks, experts say.
The LPO, which awarded key financing to Elon Musk’s Tesla in 2010, saw its lending authority soar to nearly $400 billion thanks to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. As of January 17, the office reported that over 160 applicants were currently seeking more than $200 billion in loans for various energy projects.
Sneed intends to focus the office’s remaining loan authority on technologies like nuclear power and liquefied natural gas, Bloomberg reported, technologies favored by Trump’s newly confirmed Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Wright is the founder and former CEO of fracking firm Liberty Energy and sat on the board of small modular nuclear startup Oklo. Liberty also invested $10 million in next-gen geothermal startup Fervo Energy under Wright’s tenure.
The LPO’s stated mission is to provide low-cost financing to clean energy and transportation projects that struggle to attract investment from traditional lenders who are wary of unique or first-of-a-kind investments. In seeking to make good on that promise, the LPO has actually earned — not lost — money over its 20-year history.
See the table below for the full list of Biden-era LPO loans.
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