The average LPO loan is for $1 billion and each must be reviewed by the office and others across government — including engineers, financial experts and even Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm — before funds are dispersed.
Given Trump’s pledge to “end the electric vehicle mandate” and plans laid out by former Trump administration officials in the Project 2025 document to shutter the LPO, mining companies and others are rushing to close the loans before Biden leaves office in five months. Some are likely to fall short given the short time frame, according to interviews with more than two dozen industry executives, consultants, investors, analysts and policymakers.
Without those financial lifelines, all of the sources say, many domestic critical minerals projects could be frozen in the planning stage, a step that could cripple the Western EV supply chain as Beijing-linked rivals boost market share by flooding global markets with cheap supplies of metals.
One executive with a loan pending before the LPO said Trump was “a wild card,” so the company was keen to get its loan finalised before a new president takes office in January. The executive was one of five interviewed for this article who, along with other experts in the field, declined to be identified so as not to offend Trump, a Republican, or Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic rival in the Nov. 5 election.
Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, although much of its energy-related portions were written by aides from his first term.
LPO staff members have told applicants they will be unable to finalise many outstanding loans before January given the need to closely scrutinise each project’s credit worthiness and other factors, with most loans by necessity falling to the next president to address, three sources with direct knowledge of the conversations said.
The Harris and Trump campaigns did not respond to requests for comment.
The US department of energy, which controls the LPO, said the loan program has “provided a bridge to bankability for American entrepreneurs and innovators for almost 20 years” and holds “responsible stewardship of taxpayer money” as a key priority.
“Federal programs like ours regularly continue across administration changes,” said an Energy Department spokesperson.
Harris, who cast the tiebreaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, is expected to continue many of the climate policies implemented by Biden, although her aides told Reuters she is being strategically ambiguous with energy proposals.
The LPO employs roughly 400 people, up from 90 when Biden and Harris took office in January 2021.
Trump issued only one LPO loan during his first term by lending to a Georgia nuclear project that had previously received loans under then President Barack Obama. The LPO was sidelined during the rest of Trump’s term, although his administration did update lending policies a month before leaving office to invite critical minerals projects to apply.
Much of the uncertainty with a Trump second term, according to the sources, centres on how he would implement funding portions of the IRA, which boosted LPO funding yet was opposed by Trump. While Trump couldn’t unilaterally close the LPO as it is congressionally funded, he could slow-walk the loan underwriting process to such a degree that applicants walk away.
Plug Power, which is building multiple US hydrogen plants, said it is working closely with the Energy Department to finalise its $1.66 billion loan. “Given the resilience of (department of energy) programs through previous administration changes, we remain confident that subsequent administrations will continue to support projects that have received prior conditional approval,” Andy Marsh, Plug Power’s CEO, told Reuters.