Now the office, which offers financing to clean energy technologies that struggle to borrow from banks and received a huge boost of money from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), is rushing to do just that before president-elect Donald Trump takes office in January. The incoming president, flanked by Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress, is expected to target unspent funds under the IRA, including LPO programs – putting at risk billions of loan dollars yet to be granted or finalized.

With Inauguration Day looming, the office has increased its activity in recent weeks. Since last Monday alone, the LPO announced four new conditional commitments for loans and loan guarantees and finalized a pending offer.

On Tuesday, long-duration energy storage company Eos closed a $303.5 million DOE loan guarantee to help it scale production. The day before, the DOE stated it planned to lend up to $7.5 billion to finance two electric-vehicle battery-manufacturing plants in Kokomo, Indiana. And one week earlier, the agency announced a conditional loan guarantee of nearly $5 billion to finance Grain Belt Express Phase 1, an interregional transmission line that will run between Ford County, Kansas, and Callaway County, Missouri.

Last Monday, the agency also announced conditional commitments for a direct loan of $6.6 billion to Rivian to build an EV manufacturing plant in Stanton Springs North, Georgia, and a loan guarantee of $290 million to Sunwealth to deploy up to 1,000 solar photovoltaic systems and battery energy storage systems across 27 states.

Clean energy funding in doubt over expected Republican backlash

Under the Biden administration, LPO has so far doled out just under $55 billion in funding across 32 deals for battery and EV manufacturing, nuclear reactors, ​“clean” hydrogen facilities, virtual power plants and critical minerals projects. The majority of the LPO’s investments have gone to Republican districts, according to a Politico analysis.

Most of the financing deals LPO has announced – about $41 billion worth – remain conditional, meaning the loans or loan guarantees are not yet finalized and depend on the companies meeting certain benchmarks.

Legal experts say that while the LPO’s 14 closed loans, which total more than $13 billion in investments, should remain safe from Republican backlash, delaying or undoing conditional funds could be much easier. ​“Immediately following inauguration of the new president, there is likely to be a period of inaction on financial assistance awards that are in negotiation and on announced funding opportunities,” Hogan Lovells attorney Mary Anne Sullivan wrote.

A Republican-majority Congress could potentially roll back not-yet-obligated funding in order to help offset the costs of a likely extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which are estimated to add $4.6 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.

As of November 30, the office had 212 outstanding applications with a total of $324 billion in loans requested. In November, LPO raised its estimated remaining loan authority to nearly $400 billion.

The LPO was created in 2005 to support innovative clean energy projects – or in Shah’s words, to ​“build a bridge to bankability” for technologies that haven’t yet reached the at-scale deployment needed to attract commercial lenders. The Inflation Reduction Act supercharged the office’s lending authority, taking it from $40 billion to more than $400 billion.

It’s unclear what will end up happening to the loan program with a Republican trifecta in office. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the next Republican president, proposes eliminating the LPO altogether. Billionaires Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, who have been tasked by Trump to lead a new task force called the Department of Government Efficiency, may also target the office in their sweeping proposals to slash federal programs and personnel. (Musk’s EV company, Tesla, received a $465 million loan from the office in 2010.)

Other lawmakers have suggested that the LPO could be reformed to finance more energy sources favoured by Republicans and Trump’s pick for Energy secretary, fracking company CEO Chris Wright, such as nuclear and geothermal. ​“The LPO needs to have all energy, if we go forward with it at all,” Representative Brett Guthrie, a Republican from Kentucky, told Politico’s E&E News.

DOE officials noted that local economic growth and jobs could be jeopardized should LPO investments be curtailed.

“There is steel in the ground and job openings at new or expanded facilities around the country,” a DOE spokesperson said in a statement. ​“It would be irresponsible for any government to turn its back on private sector partners, states, and communities that are benefiting from lower energy costs and new economic opportunities spurred by LPO’s investments.”

This story was originally published by Canary Media. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style.

Photo by Ajay Suresh.

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On Tuesday, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, released the draft text of a proposed rule on preventing heat injury and illness amongst the U.S. workers. If finalized, the proposed rule would become the nation’s first-ever federal regulation on heat stress in the workplace. The development comes at the start of a summer that’s already seen record-breaking heat, and days after OSHA announced tens of thousands of dollars in proposed penalties for a case involving a 41-year-old farmworker who died of heatstroke while working in Florida last year.

In a press briefing on Monday, a senior Biden administration official described the draft rule’s requirements as “common sense.”

“The purpose of this rule is simple,” said the official, who offered comments on the condition of anonymity. “It is to significantly reduce the number of worker-related deaths, injuries, and illnesses suffered by workers who are exposed to excessive heat and exposed to these risks while simply doing their jobs.”

The draft rule requires employers to implement heat injury and prevention plans that grant workers access to drinking water, shade, rest areas, and breaks once the heat index hits 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Employers would also have to develop an acclimatization plan to help new employees to become accustomed to working in extreme heat, and train supervisors and employees in how to identify heat illness. (Notably, three out of four worker fatalities that stem from heat-related illness happen on the first week of the job.) Once the heat index exceeds 90 degrees F, additional breaks and increased heat-illness symptom monitoring would also be required. The proposed rule includes a requirement that employers evaluate these plans for potential updates at least once a year.

These regulations would apply to all employers overseeing outdoor and indoor work where OSHA has jurisdiction, which includes most private-sector employers and workers in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., but doesn’t cover some workers at state and local government agencies, self-employed workers, or independent contractors. The draft rule also exempts workplaces where there is no reasonable expectation of exposure to the initial heat trigger, and indoor working conditions where temperatures are kept below the 80 degree F threshold. Furthermore, it excludes situations where employees are exposed to temperatures over the standard threshold for short periods of time, among other exceptions.

Advocates who have been fighting for national heat regulation for years are praising the move. Ligia Guallpa, executive director of the nonprofit Worker’s Justice Project, a New York City worker center for low-wage, immigrant workers, said her group “applauds” the proposed rule.

“The Biden administration is moving to protect the lives of workers,” said Amy Liebman, chief program officer at the nonprofit Migrant Clinicians Network, which aims to reduce health inequities among immigrant communities. “This effort is particularly critical as states such as Texas and Florida are not only failing to protect workers from the heat but pursuing legislation that will cause undue harm to workers.” Last year, Texas Governor Greg Abbott passed a law that blocked cities from enacting their own heat protections for workers. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a similar law into effect this past spring.

OSHA first announced that the agency would begin developing a federal heat stress rule in 2021, following a summer of record-breaking temperatures. Typically, the federal rulemaking process is fairly lengthy, and experts and organizers who spoke to Grist last month worried that the Biden administration would let the proposed heat regulation linger under review for another year or longer — at which point, depending on the outcome of the presidential election in November, the rule could be nullified by a new administration or a Republican-controlled Congress. But the surprise release of the proposed rule this week appears to signal a readiness from the Biden administration to advance the regulation, potentially with the goal of finalizing it before the end of the year.

Representative Greg Casar, a Democrat from Texas, said he feels certain, following a visit from a top OSHA official to his home state in June, that finalizing a federal heat standard is the agency’s top regulatory priority. “I think it’s clear that President Biden and his administration are responding to the climate crisis, are responding to what workers are asking for, and they’re expediting this because workers just can’t wait seven or eight years,” Casar said.

Experts expect that the OSHA rule could face legal challenges. “There are always technical quibbles,” said Michael Gerrard, the founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, “and sometimes, some courts will pick up on those quibbles.” Gerrard pointed to the recent Supreme Court decision to block the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Good Neighbor” rule, which regulated smog by taking aim at smokestack emissions, as an example of a successful legal challenge based on the argument that federal officials neglected to address public comments on the draft plan. Potentially, going forward, “people who want to challenge rules will take a look at the comments on the draft rule and complain if any of the comments wasn’t thoroughly responded to.”

The draft heat rule is now subject to a public comment period and a subsequent final review by the White House. Given the highly politicized nature of heat regulation, it is likely that OSHA will receive a considerable amount of comments on the proposed standard, which could potentially draw out the process of finalizing the regulation. A spokesperson from OSHA said the agency “cannot speculate” as to when the rule may be finalized, but that it was moving “swiftly and responsibly” to ensure workers have necessary protections.

“All workers deserve safety and an advocate for their rights,” said Guallpa. “We are heartened to see the federal government stepping up to require basic protections from extreme weather.”

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. 

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Naturally, the PM took a pasting for thinking too small.

“This announcement doesn’t remotely meet the scale of the jobs emergency or the climate emergency,” said Labour MP Ed Miliband. “France and Germany are investing tens of billions of euros. This provides, at best, £4 billion of new money over several years.”

Caroline Lucas, the U.K.’s sole Green Party MP, called Johnson’s plan “a shopping list, not a plan to address the climate emergency. It commits only a fraction of the necessary resources.”

Compare BoJo’s climate budget to U.S. president Joe Biden’s proposed US$2 trillion over four years, or US$500 billion a year, and Johnson’s critics do have a point.

Still, Greenpeace was slightly kinder, saying Boris’s announcement “signals the end of the road for polluting cars and vans, and a historic turning point on climate action.” But the organization criticized the plan for being “fixated on other speculative solutions, such as nuclear and hydrogen from fossil fuels, that will not be taking us to zero emissions anytime soon, if ever.”

Feedback is our friend. Three weeks after releasing his green plan, the PM and leader of the Conservative Party upped the ante, pledging to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions (based on 1990 levels) 68% by 2030 – the deepest GHG cuts in the Group of 20 nations.

The constructive criticism continues. As climate scientist Sir Brian Hoskins told BBC News, “Mr. Johnson’s target is ambitious – but we need action to back it up, right now.”

Mind you, many would be pleased to see Canada’s Conservative leaders share Johnson’s ambition. But with Jason Kenney in Alberta pitching pipelines, Ontario’s Doug Ford dismissing the federal carbon tax as “some green scam,” and federal Tory leader Erin O’Toole saying he’ll consult the provinces on climate policy – we won’t hold our breath.

Update: Johnson has since committed an additional £3 billion in climate finance to support biodiversity protection. But gaping holes remain in Johnson’s green agenda: his government recently decided not to block a new coal mine and last week approved the use of bee-harming neonic pesticides banned in Europe.

“New coal mines and pesticides… the UK’s so called ‘green industrial revolution’ is off to a great start, “tweeted 18-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg. “Very credible indeed.”

A version of this brief appears in the upcoming Winter Issue of Corporate Knights magazine.

Rick Spence is a business writer, speaker and consultant in Toronto specializing in entrepreneurship, innovation and growth. He is also a senior editor at Corporate Knights.

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