The Department of Energy announced on Thursday that it has eliminated nearly $30 billion in loans and conditional commitments for clean energy projects issued by the Biden administration. The agency is also in the process of “restructuring” or “revising” an additional $53 billion worth of loans projects, it said in a press release.
The agency did not include a list of affected projects and did not respond to an emailed request for clarification. However the announcement came in the context of a 2025 year-in-review, meaning these numbers likely include previously-announced cancellations, such as the $4.9 billion loan guarantee for the Grain Belt Express transmission line and the $3 billion partial loan guarantee to solar and storage developer Sunnova, which were terminated last year.
The only further detail included in the press release was that some $9.5 billion in funding for wind and solar projects had been eliminated and was being replaced with investments in natural gas and building up generating capacity in existing nuclear plants “that provide more affordable and reliable energy for the American people.”
A preliminary review of projects that may see their financial backing newly eliminated turned up four separate efforts to shore up Puerto Rico’s perennially battered grid with solar farms and battery storage by AES, Pattern Energy, Convergent Energy and Power, and Inifinigen. Those loan guarantees totalled about $2 billion. Another likely candidate is Sunwealth’s Project Polo, which closed a $289.7 million loan guarantee during the final days of Biden’s tenure to build solar and battery storage systems at commercial and industrial sites throughout the U.S. None of the companies responded to questions about whether their loans had been eliminated.
Moving forward, the Office of Energy Dominance Financing — previously known as the Loan Programs Office — says it has $259 billion in available loan authority, and that it plans to prioritize funding for nuclear, fossil fuel, critical mineral, geothermal energy, grid and transmission, and manufacturing and transportation projects.
Under Trump, the office has closed three loan guarantees totalling $4.1 billion to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, upgrade 5,000 miles of transmission lines, and restart a coal plant in Indiana.
