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DOE Loan Programs Office
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IN THIS ISSUE:
...and more updates below from the U.S. DOE Loan Programs Office!
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The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO) has announced a conditional commitment of up to $1.52 billion for a loan guarantee to Holtec Palisades, LLC (Holtec Palisades) to finance the restoration and resumption of service of an 800-MW electric nuclear generating station in Covert Township, Michigan. The project aims to bring back online the Palisades Nuclear Plant, which ceased operations in May 2022, and upgrade it to produce baseload clean power until at least 2051, subject to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing approvals.
The project is projected to support or retain up to 600 high-quality jobs in Michigan––many of them filled by workers who have been at the plant for more than 20 years––with approximately 45% of the workforce at the site being good-paying union labor upon restart. In addition to the workers supported by the facility’s restart, if finalized the loan guarantee would support more than 1,000 jobs during the facility’s regularly scheduled refueling and maintenance periods every 18 months. The project is also anticipated to avoid 4.47 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year for a total of 111 million tonnes of CO2 emissions during the projected 25 years of operations—an amount roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of removing more than 970,000 gasoline-powered cars from the road.
As with all conditional commitments that LPO offers, it's important to note that the expected DOE loan will only be issued pending the satisfaction of certain conditions, including final legal, contractual, technical, and financial requirements that the conditional commitment specifies.
Read the full Holtec Palisades conditional commitment announcement for more details.
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LPO has announced a conditional commitment for 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. This project is the first to be offered a conditional commitment through the Tribal Energy Financing Program, which was expanded and provided new loan authority by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
This project is expected to create 250 construction jobs and eight permanent operations jobs, including prioritizing Tribal-, minority-, and veteran-owned contractors—reinforcing President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to deliver new high-quality job opportunities and help workers benefit from the nation’s growing clean energy economy. The project will provide the Viejas Band with reliable utility-scale renewable energy generation and storage infrastructure through the installation of a 15 MW photovoltaic solar generation system and a 38 MWh battery long-duration energy storage system.
As with all conditional commitments that LPO offers, it's important to note that the expected DOE loan will only be issued pending the satisfaction of certain conditions, including final legal, contractual, technical, and financial requirements that the conditional commitment specifies.
Read the full Viejas Microgrid conditional commitment announcement for more details.
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LPO has announced a conditional commitment to Lithium Americas Corp’s subsidiary, Lithium Nevada Corp., for a $2.26 billion loan to help finance the construction of a lithium carbonate processing plant at Thacker Pass in Humboldt County, Nevada. The project is located next to a mine site that contains the largest-proven lithium reserves in North America.
Lithium carbonate from Thacker Pass could support the production of batteries for up to 800,000 electric vehicles annually, avoiding the consumption of 317 million gallons of gasoline per year. If finalized, the project is expected to create approximately 1,800 jobs during construction and 360 jobs in operations,
As with all conditional commitments that LPO offers, it's important to note that the expected DOE loan will only be issued pending the satisfaction of certain conditions, including final legal, contractual, technical, and financial requirements that the conditional commitment specifies.
Read the full Thacker Pass conditional commitment announcement for more details.
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Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 marked a second consecutive year of growth for LPO’s portfolio as increased applicant interest and origination activity continued.
President Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) greatly increased LPO’s ability to finance projects in energy technology, transportation, and critical infrastructure in the United States. LPO has moved diligently and thoughtfully to implement these changes in an effective manner that fulfills the mission of the office while protecting taxpayer resources.
FY 2023 showed what this new era of opportunities for federal support for low-carbon innovation and new avenues of economic growth can look like. In FY 2023, LPO closed two deals totaling over $5 billion and made conditional commitments to seven prospective borrowers totaling nearly $14 billion. Download this and previous APSR reports on LPO's Annual Portfolio Status Report page.
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DOE recently announced the release of the Pathways to Commercial Liftoff for Next-Generation Geothermal Power, underscoring the critical role that geothermal power technology needs to play in the nation’s affordable, reliable, and clean energy future.
In conjunction with that announcement, LPO released a new Tech Talk on next-generation geothermal. Michael Reed, LPO’s Director of the Technical and Project Mangement Division, states: “Conventional geothermal power plants already play a vital role in helping the country reach the Biden Administration’s goal of establishing a 100% clean energy economy by 2050, but—as noted—opportunities for new hydrothermal plants are limited. … By contrast, next-generation geothermal technologies use engineering to access ubiquitous underground heat, creating geothermal power resources where they would not otherwise exist.”
View the Next-Generation Geothermal Power Liftoff Report and read the full Tech Talk to see how LPO can finance innovative projects that employ this technology.
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