chip policies.
The White House is racing to lock down President Biden’s dearest policy goals, distributing billions of dollars to safeguard favored projects before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.
With less than two months left in his term, Biden plans to pursue a laundry list of items including funding weapons for Ukraine, pressing for stability in Gaza and winning confirmation of roughly a dozen federal judges. The judicial confirmations could bring him close to the 234 Trump accomplished during his first term.
One of the Biden administration’s most aggressive moves could come from a $400 billion clean-energy lending program inside the Energy Department. The Loan Programs Office was turbocharged by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which gave it extra funds to lend to clean-energy businesses. Biden administration officials fear a Trump administration could stop making loans from the program, which was largely dormant during Trump’s first term.
The administration also wants to protect clean-energy projects at ports around the U.S. The Environmental Protection Agency in October awarded nearly $3 billion to dozens of ports to invest in new solar arrays, decarbonized trucks and other green equipment. The agency hopes to complete most of the awards by the end of 2024, legally binding the government to make the payouts.
And U.S. officials are racing to deliver billions of dollars in manufacturing grants to Intel and others to complete a significant portion of the 2022 Chips Act to revive U.S. chip production before Biden leaves office. The Commerce Department has provisionally awarded most of the $39 billion of grant money allocated under the act. The Biden administration this week said it would grant Intel up to $7.9 billion to help fund new chip plants in four states, the largest award under the program.
Billions of dollars remain tied up in complex government negotiations, leaving some deals in limbo. The White House is aiming to distribute as much of those funds as possible before the Trump administration takes office, people familiar with the matter said.
Trump advisers have criticized the speed with which the grants are being made. Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur who Trump has assigned to lead the Department of Government Efficiency with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, said on X this week that the external advisory group will scrutinize the contracts.
White House officials said Biden is planning at least two big speeches before he departs in January: one on foreign-policy achievements; and another on his economic legacies, including legislation to rebuild infrastructure, fund climate projects and develop semiconductors.
Companies fear low-interest loan commitments from the Loan Programs Office could be reconsidered under Trump. The loans are approved by political appointees, including the head of the Energy Department, so the program is subject to the desires of the executive branch.
To minimize that risk, the Loan Programs Office plans to accelerate loan awards, people familiar with its plans said. Some companies that received conditional loan commitments could get final approval within days, the people said. The typical timeline between a commitment and final approval for the loans is months or even years.
Some companies that get loans could draw down some of the money before Trump’s inauguration, people familiar with the plans said. Energy Department officials think loans that already have delivered cash for a project would be more resilient to efforts by the Trump administration to claw them back.
The Loan Programs Office has identified about 30 projects for approval. It isn’t certain all will be approved. Plug Power, a New York hydrogen startup that received a commitment for a $1.66 billion loan in May, is one of the companies on the list slated for final approval.
Some former Energy Department officials said the accelerated pace of loan-making could result in risky deals that lead to losses, damaging the office’s reputation. Hovering over every loan decision is the specter of Solyndra, a solar-panel company that failed in 2011, causing a $535 million loan to go sour.
Run by former clean-energy entrepreneur Jigar Shah, the loan program is seen as a way to boost technologies that are too risky to get large amounts of private-sector funding without government support. Companies have found the process cumbersome and lengthy. But the loan office has had many successes. Tesla in 2010 won a $465 million loan, which it repaid in 2013.
The pace of loans from the office has already accelerated. The office on Nov. 25 said it agreed to loan EV startup Rivian Automotive $6.6 billion to help fund a plant in Georgia. The loan is conditional upon Rivian achieving technical and financial goals.
Ramaswamy posted on X, the social-media site owned by Musk, that the loan seemed to be “a political shot across the bow" at Musk and Tesla.
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