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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 to Solugen Inc.’s wholly owned subsidiary Bioforge Marshall LLC (Bioforge Marshall) for a $213.6 million loan guarantee to finance the construction of a production facility in Marshall, Minnesota, for bio-based organic acids. This commitment is the single largest U.S. government investment in bioindustrial manufacturing since President Biden signed Executive Order 14081 on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy.
The new facility, Bioforge Marshall, will house three modular trains manufacturing various organic acids for use in the concrete, cleaning, agricultural, and energy industries—cutting harmful emissions from hard-to-decarbonize sectors while helping deliver healthier communities across the nation.
As part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to create good-paying, high-quality job opportunities for American workers, this project will create up to 100 jobs during construction and 56 highly skilled full-time manufacturing jobs once fully operational. The Bioforge Marshall project will also reduce emissions by up to 18,000 metric tons of CO2e per year (equivalent to the emissions associated with powering nearly ~3,500 American homes annually)—compared to status quo fermentation or petrochemical production methods for similar organic acids.
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 Bioforge conditional commitment announcement for more details.
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In late April, the U.S. Department of Energy released its latest Pathways to Commercial Liftoff report, this time focused on offshore wind and the critical role that this and related technologies are poised to play in the nation’s affordable, reliable, and clean energy future. This week, LPO Director Jigar Shah and other senior DOE leadership participated in a deep dive webinar exploring the findings of the Offshore Wind Liftoff report.
Prior to this report's release, LPO published a Tech Talk on offshore wind, which is a key part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s ambitious goals to decarbonize the power sector by 2035 and the economy by 2050. Michael Reed, LPO’s Director of the Technical and Environmental Division, explains, "As a relatively high-capacity factor, large-scale renewable resource, offshore wind power will play a key role in generating carbon-free electricity for America’s coasts, just as land-based wind power has successfully led the transition to carbon-free resources for America’s inland populations for over a decade."
Read the Offshore Wind Liftoff report and blog, watch the deep dive webinar, and read the full Tech Talk to see how LPO can finance innovative projects that employ this technology.
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LPO’s Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment (EIR) program was created by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act to help accelerate the nation’s clean energy transition. EIR provides utilities with attractive, cost-competitive debt financing for portions of utility capital investment plans while reducing costs to customers. EIR can finance a wide range of utility projects, such as but not limited to:
- Retired power plant replaced with renewable energy and storage.
- Transmission reconductoring to expand transfer capacity of zero-emission energy.
- Upgrades to wind farms to increase output.
EIR falls under the umbrella of LPO’s Title 17 Clean Energy Financing Program. The Title 17 Program Guidance provides details on eligibility requirements common across all Title 17 project categories as well as EIR-specific requirements. Applicants should carefully review all program requirements and eligibility criteria in the Title 17 Program Guidance.
EIR eligibility falls under two categories – section 1706(a)(1) and 1706(a)(2) – and applicants can include one or both types of eligible projects in a single application. To be eligible under either category, investments in new electricity generation through the use of fossil fuels must include controls or technologies to avoid, reduce, utilize, or sequester air pollutants and anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, such as through carbon capture and sequestration.
This is the first in a series of blogs intended to help utilities navigate the LPO’s EIR loan program. Read the full blog for more insights.
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In this latest installment of the LPO Sector Spotlights series, Director Jigar Shah examines how LPO is supporting energy storage projects across the United States. For example, Director Shah explains how the Title 17 Clean Energy Financing Program’s Innovative Energy and Innovative Supply Chain category (Section 1703) can provide financing for deployment of storage technologies, or supply chain projects supporting energy storage, that use innovative technologies or processes; if qualifying storage projects receive meaningful support from a State Energy Financing Institution, they do not need to be innovative.
Separately, the Title 17 Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment (Section 1706) category provides financing for eligible storage technologies deployed in projects that retool, repower, repurpose, or replace energy infrastructure that has ceased operations or to enable operating energy infrastructure to avoid, reduce, utilize, or sequester air pollutants or anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. Finally, the Tribal Energy Financing program can support energy storage technologies in eligible projects to federally recognized tribes and qualified tribal energy development organizations.
Read the full Sector Spotlight on Energy Storage for more insights.
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The Energy Act of 2020 and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 directed LPO to engage in outreach activities through conferences and online programs to disseminate information about its programs. Below is an overview of major upcoming events.
Recent Events
LPO ATVM Program Manager Chelsea Sexton speaks at GigaUSA 2024
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GigaUSA 2024: LPO Director Jigar Shah and ATVM Program Manager Chelsea Sexton both spoke at Benchmark’s GigaUSA 2024 in Washington, DC on June 12. Jigar and Chelsea both touched upon LPO’s announcements over the past year for critical materials supply chain projects, as well as what LPO can continue to do to support a domestic EV battery supply chain.
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NAFOA Webinar on Tribal Solar-Plus-Storage & Microgrid Projects: During a Native American Finance Officers Association (NAFOA) webinar on June 4, experts from LPO's Tribal Energy Finance Program team shared how solar-plus-storage and microgrid projects can address the needs of Tribes' high-load facilities—such as gaming, hospitality, and retail facilities—and how the Loan Programs Office can provide support.
Additionally, the Tribal Energy Finance Program team has created a specialized outreach initiative for Tribes to leverage DOE financing for solar-plus-storage and microgrid projects.
Visit Energy.gov/LPO/TribalResiliency to view five potential use cases and a simplified pre-application consultation request form for Tribes that are interested in these types of projects.
Major Upcoming Events
ACP RECHARGE Energy Storage Summit • 26-28 Jun 2024 • Portland, OR
LPO Senior Consultant Kate Howling will be attending ACP RECHARGE: Energy Storage Summit to engage with the energy storage sector. She will be participating on the panel "Long-Duration Technology Commercialization & Supply Chain Development" on Thursday, June 27 from 1:00-2:00 p.m.
NARUC Summer Summit 2024 • 14-17 Jul 2024 • West Palm Beach, FL
LPO Senior Advisor Jen Downing will be engaging with electric utility industry at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) Summe Summit to discuss virtual power plants
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