Biden attempts to revive cleanenergy loan program

WASHINGTON — As part of its cleanenergy agenda, the Biden administration is reviving an Energy Department program that disbursed billions of dollars in loan guarantees to companies such as electric car maker Tesla and the failed solar company Solyndra, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm says.

The loan program helped launch the country’s first utilityscale wind and solar farms as part of the Obama administration’s efforts to create “green jobs” but largely went dormant under former President Donald Trump.

The program boosted Tesla’s efforts to become a behemoth in electric cars, but it stumbled with a major loan guarantee to Solyndra, the Fremontbased solar company that failed soon after receiving federal money a decade ago, costing taxpayers more than $500 million.

Republicans and other critics cite Solyndra as an example of wasteful spending under President Barack Obama’s stimulus program, and the loan guarantees have largely dried up in recent years. The Energy Department provided $12 billion in guarantees for the Vogtle nuclear power station in Georgia, but few other loans were offered under Trump.

That’s about to change — in a big way, Granholm says.

Granholm said up to $40 billion in guarantees will be made available for a variety of cleanenergy projects, including wind, solar and hydro power, advanced vehicles, geothermal and even nuclear.

“It’s got to be clean. That’s it,” she said. “And when I say clean, you know, it’s technologies that are being researched in the lab,” like projects to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions, socalled green hydrogen fuel and other energy sources, she said.

The program will be overseen by Jigar Shah, a longtime cleanenergy entrepreneur who helped pioneer solar power in the U.S.

While Republicans are likely to focus on avoiding a repeat of Solyndra, Granholm, a former Michigan governor, said Tesla is a better example. The company’s founder, Elon Musk, repaid the loan in full years ahead of schedule and Tesla is now one of the world’s leading makers of electric cars and battery storage.

“I mean, obviously that was two administrations ago,” she said, referring to Solyndra, which went bankrupt in 2011. “We’ve learned a lot since then. People understand that when you invest in technology that is new, you’re going to have some that don’t succeed.”