Republicans in Congress are facing pressure from a former senior official with the Department of Energy to help facilitate the release of more than $40 billion worth of clean energy loans committed under the Biden administration.

Jennifer Downing, former chairwoman of the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment Program, one of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office’s four main loan programs, appealed to lawmakers in the House and Senate in a letter last week to help advance deals that she said could advance the Trump administration’s goals of energy dominance.  

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“DOE has committed tens of billions of dollars of loans that need to be finalized and disbursed to help solve the looming electricity deficit, make energy more affordable, bring American energy innovations to commercial scale, create manufacturing jobs, and achieve energy dominance,” Downing wrote in the letter obtained by the Washington Examiner. 

The LPO has not finalized a single loan agreement since the Trump administration took office in January. Secretary Chris Wright doubts the validity of loan commitments made in the weeks before the Inauguration. 

Many of these conditional commitment agreements, announced after the 2024 Presidential Election, are geared toward propping up clean energy projects related to electric vehicles, renewable energy sources, and other low-carbon solutions. 

Projects such as these face the ire of the Trump administration, which has quickly shifted the federal government’s focus back on traditional, baseload sources of energy, such as coal and natural gas. The administration has said this is to support its goals of securing reliable and affordable energy for Americans while strengthening the national grid as demand levels soar. 

But Downing is among several current and former LPO employees who say that several loan deals that are waiting for finalization can achieve just that. 

Downing, who left her role in May, pointed out that within the EIR program alone, numerous loan commitments have been made to electric and gas utilities, which she said could save Americans more than $500 million each year on their utility bills. 

DOE lists 10 utility projects with conditional loan commitments from the government totaling more than $27 billion. One, PG&E’s Polaris Project, is still marked as not having been finalized. However, that $15 billion deal was ultimately closed on Jan. 17. 

Looking at the entire LPO portfolio, more than $40 billion worth of loans have a conditional commitment status, meaning these deals have yet to be finalized, and no money has yet been disbursed to the project developers. 

Finalizing a loan varies depending on the project, taking anywhere from several weeks to just a few months. In the case of PG&E, the conditional commitment for their project was announced in December and finalized exactly one month later. 

Former and current department staffers who spoke with the Washington Examiner emphasized that while conditional commitments still require certain technical, legal, financial, and even environmental commitments, these borrowers have met all conditions to close on the loans. 

Failure to do so with the existing deals “undermines the credibility of the federal government in public-private partnerships for infrastructure projects that require multiple decades of collaboration and billions of dollars of investment,” Downing said. 

The inaction on the existing loan commitments has coincided with Wright’s repeated criticism of how the Biden administration handled and made these deals. 

During congressional hearings in May and June, Wright claimed the previous administration rushed the loan agreements through due diligence without a proper business plan in some cases. 

Former and current employees, though, have defended their due diligence, pointing to a yearslong process to reach commitments.

“Not only was that a false statement, it was also bold,” Downing wrote. “Fact-checking such statements would be easy since every application required hundreds of pages of documentation submitted to Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget, and just asking an applicant when they submitted their application and accompanying information would disprove it.”

One department employee said that projects within LPO’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program started their application process in 2022. 

Jigar Shah, who served as LPO director under former President Joe Biden, previously told the Washington Examiner that all of the projects approved by the end of the Biden administration took the department two years to process, with due diligence starting at the start of 2024 at the very latest. 

In her letter, Downing said that LPO has undergone three rounds of leadership since Trump took office, each prompting an investigation into the Biden-era loan agreements and creating delays. This was driven by what she described as “the relentless search for wrongdoing.” However, none have been found. 

She said that, in May, the administration indicated to LPO leadership that the agency would not be moving forward on the previous commitments as they stood, and was presumably looking for alternatives to finalizing the loan agreements. 

“This is bigger than killing a deal; it undermines the credibility of the federal government,” Downing said. “If legally binding loan commitments under one administration can be wiped away by the next, what are the implications for public-private partnership in America to build infrastructure projects that require multi-decade partnerships to manage billions of dollars of investment?”

Downing’s letter was sent primarily to the leadership of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and House Energy and Commerce Committee leaders. The Washington Examiner learned that it was also later circulated among members in the House.

To Downing and others, the administration can utilize tools laid out by their predecessors to advance Trump’s energy agenda, particularly as it relates to strengthening grid reliability and generating more power to meet demand. 

As the Trump administration has moved to suppress renewable energy and boost fossil fuels, loan commitments focused solely on transmission or natural gas have also been collateral damage.

Now, seven months into the administration, current and former staffers have warned that borrowers waiting for loans to be finalized may be more inclined to walk away from the deal and secure the funding elsewhere to advance their projects. Several have already done so.  

CHRIS WRIGHT BACKS LOAN OFFICE AND CLEAN CREDITS BEFORE CONGRESS

When pressed on the status of LPO’s current portfolio, a Department of Energy spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that the agency is conducting a “department-wide review to ensure all activities follow the law, comply with applicable court orders, and align with the Trump administration’s priorities.” 

“The American people provided President Donald Trump with a mandate to govern and to unleash ‘American Energy Dominance,’” the statement continued. “The Department of Energy is hard at work to deliver on President Trump’s promise to restore affordable, reliable, and secure energy to the American people.”