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Sparks

Chris Wright Is Overhauling $83 Billion of Loans. He Won’t Say Which Ones.

The Secretary of Energy announced the cuts and revisions on Thursday, though it’s unclear how many are new.

The Energy Department logo holding money.
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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.

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Sparks

The Fed’s First Rate Hike Since 2023 Is a Problem for Renewables

And the news gets worse.

Kevin Warsh.
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The Federal Reserve raised the federal funds rate by a quarter point, the central bank announced Wednesday afternoon, its first rate change since Chairman Kevin Warsh took his seat in May and its first rate hike in over three years.

The federal funds rate will now sit between 3.75% and 4%. According to projections by regional Federal Reserve presidents and members of the Board of Governors, the central bank expects to hike rates one more time this year.

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Sparks

Why SoCal Electricity Customers Are Paying for Utility Reforms

The August Electricity Price Hub data is in.

The Hollywood sign and power lines.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

It’s another hot and expensive summer.

Across the country, average household electricity bills are up 2.7% in the first eight months of the year, according to the latest update to Heatmap and MIT’s Electricity Price Hub, tacking on $4 per month to the typical bill. This level of rise is consistent with the pace set in 2024 and 2025, but faster than 2021 and 2023.

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Sparks

The Startup Behind Lamppost-Mounted EV Chargers Pulls Into the Garage

Voltpost announced two new models today designed to mount on walls and ceilings.

Voltpost chargers.
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Voltpost, the company putting electric vehicle chargers on lampposts, is now expanding to parking garages.

On Wednesday, the company unveiled two new configurations that can attach to the walls and ceilings of parking garages, lots, and other locations without easy access to streetlights or utility poles. Like Voltpost’s signature pole-mounted design, the ceiling- and wall-mounted options avoid the expensive construction work required by freestanding charging infrastructure. In theory at least, that should allow the company to deploy more chargers faster.

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