Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are demanding that the Department of Energy’s (DOE) green tech loans office stop giving out loans amid a lame-duck lending bonanza. [emphasis, links added]
Republican Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, and H. Morgan Griffith of Virginia wrote to DOE Loan Programs Office (LPO) director Jigar Shah to demand that LPO stop issuing any new conditional commitments, loans or loan guarantees in the waning days of the Biden administration.
LPO — which supports fledgling green tech companies that may otherwise struggle to secure private sector financing — has significantly accelerated its lending in recent months, and the office is reportedly hustling to lock in approximately $25 billion worth of financing before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January 2025.
“On election day, the American people rejected the Biden-Harris administration’s rush-to-green agenda,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter to Shah.
“To honor the will of our electorate and facilitate an orderly transition, we insist that the Biden-Harris administration cease its campaign to quickly distribute federal funding before the incoming administration takes office. As such, we request that the LPO pause issuance of any additional conditional commitments, loans, or loan guarantees in the final weeks of the current administration.”
LPO has closed on eight loans over the last two months or so, and the office has also conditionally committed to four loans worth a combined $19.3 billion since Election Day, the lawmakers wrote.
Notably, the DOE’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) published a November report in which it identified several potential risks to the taxpayer at LPO, including concerns that the office is in such a rush to get money out the door that it may be neglecting to conduct adequate due diligence on loan recipients.
On Tuesday, LPO closed a $303.5 million loan package for Eos, a battery company, to help cover the costs of up to four automated production lines in its factory just outside of Pittsburgh, according to Politico.
The DOE maintains that this particular loan will “create up to 1,000 high-quality union jobs.”
The LPO was active during the Obama administration when the office extended a $535 million loan package to Solyndra, a green company that went bust two years later.
The office was not particularly busy during the Trump years, but the Biden administration and Congress pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into LPO to dish out to green tech firms.
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