Two years later, signs that the IRA is steadily bringing the President’s Investing in America agenda to reality is nowhere clearer than in the private sector’s interest in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office.
August 16, 2024
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As the largest climate investment in U.S. history, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) brought the Biden-Harris Administration’s vision for a just, globally competitive, and decarbonized economy into focus. Two years later, signs that the IRA is steadily bringing the President’s Investing in America agenda to reality is nowhere clearer than in the private sector’s interest in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO).
On the IRA’s first anniversary, I highlighted the groundwork LPO had laid in the year prior to ensure the effective and efficient use of IRA funds. Today, on the second anniversary of the IRA, I’d like to take the opportunity to look back on a year in which we saw our efforts earnestly reflected in the volume of interest in our programs and the quality of projects for which LPO announced support.
IRA Year Two SummaryAugust 2023-2024 | |||
| Title 17 Programs | ATVM | TELP | |
| Conditional Commitments Announced | EOS, Plug Power, Bioforge, Holtec Palisades, LongPath Technologies, IRG Erie, Project Marahu, and QCells | SK Siltron, Thacker Pass, and Entek | Viejas Microgrid |
| CC Totals | up to $6.4 billion | up to $4 billion | up to $72.8 million |
| Closings Announced | Project Hestia | CelLink | - |
| Closing Totals | $3 billion | $ 362 million | - |
| Announcement Totals | $9.4 billion | $4.3 billion | up to $72.8 million |
TITLE 17 CLEAN ENERGY FINANCING
Providing Resources: With IRA Title 17 program funding available through September 30, 2026, LPO gave extra attention to ensuring the IRA-created Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment (EIR) program is well understood by potential applicants. We also released well-received guidance on how the Section 1703 categories (Clean Energy, Innovative Supply Chains, and State Energy Finance Institution [SEFI]) can support critical minerals processing, manufacturing, and recycling projects—project types LPO was unable to support prior to the IRA. Finally, our state outreach team continued to drum up interest in the SEFI category through nationwide engagement and new applicant resources. We saw more than a dozen state organizations establish pathways for clean energy project developers to access state and federal financing opportunities in response.
In the second year since the IRA’s passage, the Title 17 Clean Energy Financing program saw six conditional commitments announced, totaling just over $5 billion, as well as the closing of a $3 billion loan guarantee. In March, the Holtec Palisades conditional commitment marked the first ever EIR announcement, followed by a second in July with Clean Flexible Energy’s Project Marahu, a collection of utility-scale solar and battery storage projects in Puerto Rico.
Whether it is remote methane detection or cleaner steelmaking, the range of technologies undergoing commercialization in other announcements is in no small part thanks to the competencies of LPO’s growing inhouse technical team and its access to DOE’s nationwide, world-class expertise. Scaling innovative deployments like these are critical if we expect hard-to-decarbonize industrial processes to contribute to the Biden-Harris Administration’s goal of 50-percent reduction in economy-wide net greenhouse gas pollution by 2030.
As of July 31, 2024, the Title 17 program had a remaining $127.6 billion of loan authority across its four categories, a figure outsized by loan requests currently in the pipeline.
ADVANCED TRANSPORTATION FINANCING
New Rulemaking: In April of this year, LPO published a direct final rule implementing IRA-funded eligibility for new on-road and nonroad advanced technology vehicles under the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) Loan Program. As we prepare to undertake another rulemaking related to these expanded categories, we’ve solicited and are reviewing public comments concerning specific eligibility criteria for these additional modes of transport.
Since August 2023, the ATVM Loan Program has continued to support the onshoring of critical supply chains in the United States with three conditional comments announced totaling $4 billion dollars and one $362 million loan closing. As battery manufacturers seek domestically made components to qualify for tax incentives from the IRA, the interest we saw from manufacturers of components such as battery separators hinted at the beginning of the next stage of evolution for the domestic battery supply chain.
As of July 31, 2024, the ATVM Loan Program had an estimated $46 billion of remaining loan authority.
TRIBAL ENERGY FINANCING
A More Reflective Name: By providing access to direct lending, IRA effectively removed the need for a Tribal borrower to secure a commercial debt partner, a change that we’re seeing increases Tribes’ interest in utilizing the program for energy development investments. In light of that update, last year we officially updated the name of the program from “Tribal Energy Loan Guarantee Program” (TELGP) to simply “Tribal Energy Financing Program " (TEFP) to better reflect the additional option.
In March of this year, we announced the first conditional commitment for the program—an up to $72.8 million partial loan guarantee to finance the development of a solar-plus-long-duration-energy-storage microgrid on the Tribal lands of the Viejas Band of the Kumeyaay Indians near Alpine, California.
As of July 31, 2024, the Tribal Energy Financing program had a remaining $19.9 billion of loan guarantee authority.
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In addition to these deal announcements and programmatic progress, LPO’s active application pipeline has grown from 77 applications requesting $80.8 billion in July 2022 to 209 applications requesting over $281 billion in cumulative project financing today. With expanded funding and authority from the IRA continuing to attract quality applications two years later, LPO has put the personnel and processes in place to effectively implement and steward taxpayer resources at the cadence necessary to address the climate challenge. LPO continues financing the next generation of clean energy infrastructure and advanced mobility manufacturing in the United States to ensure the benefits of the emerging clean energy economy reach all Americans.
* This blog is a part of the Getting to Know LPO series, which provides more information about the role of the Loan Programs Office at the U.S. Department of Energy.
Jigar Shah
Former Director, Loan Programs Office
Jigar Shah served as Director of the Loan Programs Office (LPO) at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) from March 2021 to January 2025. He led and directed LPO’s loan authority to support deployment of innovative clean energy, advanced transportation, and Tribal energy projects in the United States. Prior, Shah was co-founder and President at Generate Capital, where he focused on helping entrepreneurs accelerate decarbonization solutions through the use of low-cost infrastructure-as-a service financing. Prior to Generate Capital, Shah founded SunEdison, a company that pioneered “pay as you save” solar financing. After SunEdison, Shah served as the founding CEO of the Carbon War Room, a global non-profit founded by Sir Richard Branson and Virgin Unite to help entrepreneurs address climate change.
Shah was also featured in TIME's list of the "100 Most Influential People" in 2024.
Originally from Illinois, Shah holds a B.S. from the University of Illinois-UC and an MBA from the University of Maryland College Park.