The Trump administration said it’s canceling almost $30 billion of financing from the Energy Department’s green bank after reviewing transactions approved under former President Biden.
The Energy Department said Thursday that its Loan Programs Office — now called the Office of Energy Dominance Financing — also plans to revise an additional $53 billion of funding.
In a statement, the department said it has eliminated about $9.5 billion in financing for wind and solar projects as part of the adjustment and plans to redirect the funding toward natural gas and nuclear projects.
The Energy Department, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, didn’t provide specific details on which other deals were affected.
The Energy Department’s loans office swelled into a $400-billion green bank under Biden, partly due to an infusion in funds from his signature Inflation Reduction Act. The office has been used to finance Tesla Inc.’s Model S sedan and some of the first new nuclear reactors built in the U.S. in decades by Southern Co. But the program drew criticism from Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who said the department closed or offered $85 billion of financing in the final months of the Biden presidency after Donald Trump’s election.
“We found more dollars were rushed out the door of the Loan Programs Office in the final months of the Biden Administration than had been disbursed in over 15 years,” Wright said in Thursday’s statement.
While Trump once proposed killing the Energy Department program — arguing during his first term that the government had no business picking winners and losers — his administration later sought to tap the bank to pay for its own energy priorities.
The administration has laid out plans to use the program, which has more than $289 billion in loan authority remaining, to finance projects such as nuclear reactors, geothermal power and critical minerals.
Natter writes for Bloomberg.
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