The Loan Programs Office (LPO) announced eight conditional commitments valued at $22.92 billion to help support transmission, clean generation, energy storage, and grid modernization.
The LPO provides loans and loan guarantees available to help deploy innovative clean energy, advanced transportation, and Tribal energy projects in the United States. As of September 2024, LPO has financed a $43.9 billion portfolio of clean energy projects and advanced technology vehicle manufacturing facilities across the U.S., supporting jobs and the buildout of clean energy as well as gas pipeline investments.
By accessing what the LPO says is the lowest-cost debt, these utilities will be able to lower financing costs for infrastructure projects compared to accessing funds from commercial capital markets. It is intended that they pass along the savings to customers.
The loans were made through LPO’s Title 17 Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment (EIR) program, with funds loaned to utilities serving more than 14.78 million customers across 12 states.
| LPO’s January 16, 2025 Announcement: Conditional Commitments for Loan Guarantees to Utility Borrowers | |||
| PROJECT | DOLLARS | STATES | # OF CUSTOMERS BENEFITTING |
| PacificCorp Western Interconnected Renewable Energy | $3.52B | California, Idaho, Oregon, and Utah | 2.1 million |
| DTE Gas Clean Energy | $1.64B | Michigan | 1.3 million |
| DTE Electric Clean Energy | $7.17B | Michigan | 2.3 million |
| Interstate Power and Light Clean Energy Blueprint Projects | $1.43B | Iowa | 500,000 |
| Wisconsin Power and Light Clean Energy Blueprint Projects | $1.62B | Wisconsin | 500,000 |
| Consumers Energy Clean Energy | $5.23B | Michigan | 3.1 million |
| Jersey Central Power & Light Transmission Projects | $0.71B | New Jersey | 1.2 million |
| AEP Transmission Projects | $1.60B | Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma, and West Virginia | 3.78 million |
| TOTAL: | $ 22.92 B | 12 states | 14.78 million |
Utility projects supported by these loans are expected to add much-needed transmission capacity by building new transmission lines, reconductoring existing lines and implementing grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) that will get more out of existing grid.
In a 2023 National Transmission Needs Study, DOE found that the U.S. will need to add 54.5 TW-miles of within-region transmission by 2035 under future scenarios with moderate load but high clean energy assumptions, which the authors believe represent the most likely power sector future given recently enacted laws.
As recently reported in pv magazine USA, 2100 GW of solar and storage projects await transmission interconnection in the U.S., researchers found that reconductoring transmission with high-capacity or “advanced” conductors could enable interconnection of 764 GW of utility-scale solar.
Grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) were cited by an RMI study as having the potential to save project developers collectively hundreds of millions of dollars in interconnection costs compared to default network upgrades, which could potentially be passed on to rate payers, which is important because of the rapidly rising electric rates in the state.
The LPO said additional grid modernization investments include substation upgrades, virtual power plants and “strategically placed” energy storage intended to improve use and performance of the system that’s already in place.
The LPO’s Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment Loans by Borrower Type page includes an up-to-date list of all LPO projects with utility borrowers.
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