3 Terrible Companies To Lose $5 Billion in Federal Green Energy Loans
In the last days of the Biden administration, the Energy Department dolled out billions of dollars for politically favored green energy projects. The Trump administration is looking to claw this funding back.
The Energy Department is getting ready to “cancel seven major loans and loan guarantees that had been conditionally approved under the Biden administration,” reports Semafor. This action will cancel approximately $5 billion worth of funding for a transmission project by a New Jersey utility company, a loan program for low-income homeowners to install rooftop solar panels by Sunnova, and a Monolith Nebraska factory to produce low-carbon ammonia. The remaining four projects, which collectively received over $3 billion, include three battery factories and a plastics and recycling facility, which “were already previously cancelled by their companies because of other various headwinds,” according to Semafor.Â
The three active projects that will have their federal loans axed have faced their own share of problems.Â
In September 2023, Sunnova received a $3 billion partial loan guarantee from the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) for Project Hestia—a program that would make residential rooftop solar, battery storage, and virtual power plants “available to more American homeowners.” Hestia was expected to provide loans to as many as 115,000 homeowners in the United States and Puerto Rico for these technologies, while creating “3,400 good-paying, high-quality American jobs.”Â
After receiving the federal loan, Sunnova came under fire for its alleged history of predatory practices and scamming elderly clients, which led to subsequent congressional scrutiny. In April, Sunnova began filing for bankruptcy. The company recently said it was no longer planning to use the programming funding and was working with the Energy Department to return the remaining guarantees.Â
Monolith received a $953 million conditional loan guarantee from th
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