Energy Secretary Chris Wright hinted that he would soon take action to cancel billions of dollars’ worth of Biden-era green energy loans that he said do not promote American energy security and are too risky for taxpayers. [emphasis, links added]
In an exclusive interview with the Washington Free Beacon, Wright took aim at how the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Loan Programs Office dished out billions of dollars in loans during the final months of the Biden administration.
While Wright stopped short of naming particular projects he may cancel loans for, he said the Trump administration would only look to support projects that directly benefit Americans and are not entirely dependent on taxpayer money.
When asked how he will approach pending loans, Wright emphasized that the DOE’s core mission is “affordable, reliable, secure energy.”
“So, if you’ve got a project that relates to those things, if you’ve got equity capital and math that shows your project is going to work, and you’re putting your own money in front of it, we can come behind you and provide a little debt capital that can make that happen faster,” Wright said. “Those are the kind of deals we’ll do.”
“We’re not going to lend billions of dollars to companies with no money in the technology—who knows if it’s gonna work? And even if it did work, it wouldn’t add a lot of energy to the United States,” he told the Free Beacon.
“When we lend, our focus is the American people. If this loan is going to make life for the American people better, then we’re in favor of it. If this loan is going to give some businessman a chance at the holy grail, we’re not going to lend in that case.”
Wright’s comments—which come as his agency continues a broad review of the Loan Programs Office’s activities—reflect many of the same concerns expressed by critics who say the Biden administration weaponized its lending authority to fund risky green energy projects like solar panel assembly plants, electric vehicle battery manufacturing, and hydrogen power facilities.
Overall, Biden’s DOE closed on 25 loans worth $60.6 billion and issued conditional commitments on loans for 27 projects worth $46.9 billion, according to a Free Beacon analysis of federal filings.
The Biden administration’s approach to the loan program was to give away as much money as possible and ask questions later…
More than 80 percent of those loan closures and loan commitments came after President Donald Trump defeated former vice president Kamala Harris in November.
The largest loan the Biden administration closed came on Jan. 17, 2025, and was a $15 billion loan supporting California-based utility company Pacific Gas & Electric Company’s development of solar and wind power.
The largest Biden-era conditional commitment was a loan announced on Jan. 16, 2025, for long-duration battery storage projects that the Michigan-based DTE Electric Company is developing.
Other loans issued in the final weeks of the previous administration included a $9.6 billion loan to support Ford’s electric vehicle battery manufacturing, $7.5 billion for Stellantis’s electric vehicle battery projects, $6.6 billion for electric vehicle maker Rivian’s manufacturing plant, $1.7 billion for a sustainable aviation fuel plant, and $1.5 billion for South Korean solar panel maker QCells’s assembly plant.
“The Biden administration’s approach to the loan program was to give away as much money as possible and ask questions later,” Tom Pyle, the president of the Institute for Energy Research and a member of the 2016 Trump transition team, told the Free Beacon.
“It was an irresponsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars. Secretary Wright should cancel as many of these loans as possible, especially the ones issued during the transition.”
Read rest at Free Beacon
