Department hustling to issue final payouts from $400 billion program before Trump's return: 'They want to ... safeguard as much progress as they can'

These projects are awaiting crucial funds that, under Donald Trump's presidency, may never arrive.

What's happening?

The Loan Programs Office at the Department of Energy is trying to get billions of dollars in loans out before Trump returns to office.

The LPO's mission is to provide loans and loan guarantees for projects that focus on clean energy and advanced transportation. Not only does the program fund impactful projects and developments, but it's profitable, too, earning billions of dollars in interest payments over the past 20 years.

The goal is to fulfill the loan guarantees before January, when the "guarantee" isn't as guaranteed. "They want to get out as much money as possible just to safeguard as much progress as they can," former LPO policy adviser Kennedy Nickerson told The New York Times.

While Trump hasn't spoken decisively on the fate of the LPO, many Republican members of Congress have expressed a desire to slash its funding. The program has been around since 2005 but flourished under the Biden administration, "balloon[ing] to more than $400 billion in 2022 when Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act," per the Times.

Why are the loans important?

The LPO has "backed dozens of projects across the nation, including battery factories in Ohio and Tennessee, the revival of a shuttered nuclear reactor in Michigan and a novel rooftop solar expansion in Puerto Rico," according to the Times.

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Without this financing, companies, especially startups, can struggle to find funding for their products and technologies that could help improve quality of life and help protect the planet.

Under the Trump administration, much of the promised money could be in limbo, and these planet-saving projects could be halted for years.

What's being done about the program?

Some hold hope that the program will continue to exist, even if funding switches directions.

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The Times stated that "could mean less money for electric vehicles, which Mr. Trump has bashed, and more money for technologies like carbon capture or geothermal, which some of Mr. Trump's energy advisers have supported."

Others believe that regardless of who's in charge, their projects are both profitable and necessary. "What these companies are doing is so important that I just think it'll be unstoppable," Jigar Shah, who leads the Loan Programs Office, told the Times.