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U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris at Qcells's solar panel plant in Dalton, Georgia.

ASthe presidential race heats up, there’s growing concern that a large pool of loan funds created by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to accelerate clean energy projects won’t be fully tapped if voters opt to return Republican Donald Trump to the White House. To date, less than $10 billion of the $400 billion available for the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office has been doled out to qualified applicants. Several billion dollars worth of low-interest loans have gone to makers of solar panels and related components, domestic battery production, electric vehicle components and refurbishing of old nuclear power plants, but it’s been a slow process.

In part, that’s because Energy Dept. staff are wary of making big loans to companies that could go belly up, hoping to avoid a repeat of famous past failures such as Silicon Valley-based solar panel maker Solyndra. Senate Republicans have also scrutinized and criticized the loan program as a potential source of government waste. While the IRA didn’t create the Loan Programs Office, it set aside new funding for the unit, which was dormant during Trump’s presidency.

Under Biden, the office has so far approved loans totaling about $6.5 billion to five companies and has over 200 applications seeking $281 billion as of the end of July. Given the unknown election outcome, the pace of loan commitments appears to have picked up, however, with a new $1.45 billion agreement for an expansion of a solar project in Georgia, $1.2 billion for a battery parts producer and an $861 million agreement for solar farms and battery storage in Puerto Rico, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Part of the challenge of accelerating loan approvals, however, is that Energy staff are trying to be cautious in evaluating candidates to avoid embarrassing lending boondoggles. The process is “brutal,”........

© Forbes