One of the beauties of the Biden administration’s Green New Deal, which was dressed up as the “Inflation Reduction Act,” was that the goal was very simple, and had nothing to do with green energy.
Its only goal was to spread money around to lefty groups, and “green energy” was merely the latest excuse for sending gobs of cash to left-wing activists.
That’s why it should surprise us not at all that they pushed over $90 billion in “loans” out the door in the waning days of the Biden administration, with $42 billion being shoveled out in the last two days they were in office.
James Varney reports that in its final days, Biden’s Energy Department approved $93 billion in green energy loans, with nearly $42 billion committed in just the last two working days—exceeding the previous decade’s total loan disbursements. https://t.co/AoSfY8Qdua
— RealClearInvestigations (@RCInvestigates) June 30, 2025
It’s not just the Energy Department. The EPA, too, shoveled out tens of billions in “loans,” despite the fact that its budget in any given year is approximately $10 billion, and we all know how well they manage it.
In its last two working days, the Biden administration’s Energy Department signed off on nearly $42 billion for green energy projects – a sum that exceeded the total amount its Loan Programs Office (LPO) had put out in the past decade.
The frenzied activity on Jan. 16 and 17, 2025, capped a spending binge that saw the LPO approve at least $93 billion in current and future disbursements after Vice President Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election in November, according to documents provided by the department to RealClearInvestigations. It appears that Biden officials were rushing to deploy billions in approved funding in anticipation that the incoming Trump administration would seek to redirect uncommitted money away from clean energy projects.
The agreements were made despite a warning from the department’s inspector general, urging the loan office to suspend operations in December over concerns that post-election loans could present conflicts of interest.
In just a few months, some of the deals have already become dicey, leading to fears that the Biden administration has created multiple Solyndras, the green energy company that went bankrupt after the Obama administration gave it $570 million. These deals include:
- Sunnova, a rooftop solar outfit that thus far had $382 million of its $3.3 billion loan guaranteed, filed for bankruptcy this month. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
- Li-Cycle, a battery recycling facility, had a $445 million loan approved in November, but since then, the company was put up for sale and has filed for bankruptcy. The Energy Department said no money has been disbursed on that deal. Li-Cycle did not respond to a request for comment.
- A $705 million loan was approved on Jan. 17 for Zum Energy, an electric school bus company in California, and its “Project Marigold.” At $350,000 and more, electric school buses currently cost more than twice as much as their diesel counterparts. So far, Zum has received $21.7 million from the government, according to usaspending.gov. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
- A $9.63 billion Blue Oval SK loan on Jan. 16 was the second largest post-election deal, topped only by a $15 billion loan the next day to Pacific Gas & Electric, with most of that for renewables. The Blue Oval project in Kentucky – a joint venture between Ford Motor Co. and a South Korean entity – has been dealing with numerous workplace complaints, and construction of a second EV battery manufacturing plant there has been delayed. More than $7 billion has been obligated on that deal, according to the Energy Department. Blue Oval did not respond to a request for comment.
It’s mildly surprising that the Inspector General had the cajones to call bulls**t on the loan process. It’s almost cute that anybody in government even pretends that the stated goal and explicit rules by which money is spent are real things that anybody should care about.
Government is a graft machine. Any good it does is an almost unintended byproduct, although I do admit that the powers that be understand that they must appear to be doing something good with all that money. So it may be fairer to say that the taxpayers are milked, the cream skimmed off the top for the elite, and the skim milk is used to build roads and bridges.
🚨 NEW REPORT: “These Numbers Don’t Make Sense” – our latest investigation exposes the EPA’s $27B greendoggle. “Lacks detail.” “Vague.” “Unclear.” Reviewers raised red flags — billions awarded anyway. pic.twitter.com/RDH1mw7HEc
— Protect the Public’s Trust (@PublicsTrust) June 17, 2025
That $2 billion handed out to Stacey Abrams to buy Energy Star appliances for a few people? No doubt, should Abrams finally get her slice of the pie, a few families will get some appliances–it will be good for the photo ops–but $2 billion will surely fund a lot of employees for the nonprofit, and leave quite a bit to fund activism.
It’s the California High Speed Rail model of government. Spend oodles of money to build a few thousand feet of concrete bridges or something, and demand more oodles of money to do it again. The longer it takes, the better.
Call it the “Gravy Train.” All gravy, no train.
Even with the rush to push billions out the door in its last months, close to $300 billion of the Inflation Reduction Act money remains uncommitted by the LPO. Trump administration officials have already nixed some smaller deals. Secretary Wright recently urged Congress to keep the money in place as the LPO now aims to use it to further the Trump administration’s energy policy, particularly with nuclear projects.
That unprecedented gusher of cash from the LPO echoes the efforts of the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency to push $20 billion out the door before it left office. As RCI has previously reported, the EPA – which had never been a consequential grant-making operation – was tasked with awarding $27 billion in Inflation Reduction Act funding through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and Solar For All programs. It did so in less than six months in 2024, including an unorthodox arrangement in which Biden officials parked some $20 billion outside the Treasury’s control. That money was earmarked for a handful of nonprofits, some of which had skimpy assets and were linked with politically connected directors.
The LPO’s post-election bonanza was put together in even less time. The Energy Department deals, however, involve mostly for-profit enterprises, which raises questions about whether the Biden administration was propping up companies that would not have survived in the private marketplace. Should any of the companies hit it big in the future, shareholders could get rich, while taxpayers will receive only the interest on the loan.
Of course, governments have always been mostly about graft, and the majority of our budget goes to direct payments to taxpayers from whom the money was initially taken, with a fair amount of redistribution thrown into the mix. Then there is defense, which, while marred by corruption, has produced a formidable military. It’s not all bad. Just mostly.
Governments are necessary because the alternative is the strong dominating the weak, and the weakest of us all being abandoned to an awful fate. Modern liberalism, though, was all about keeping government in check to moderate its worst excesses.
In many cases, though, we have just bureaucratized the graft and spread it around a bit more. The government has become more tolerable and gentle, but also more intrusive.
The least we can expect is that the graft be kept within limits. It’s part of the deal, right?
