Biden’s $250 Billion Lure to Clean Up the Dirty Legacy of Fossil Fuels

Public Policy & Regulation attorney Taite McDonald spoke with Vox about an expanded Congressional mandate allowing the Loan Programs Office (LPO) to distribute up to $250 billion in loans to "retool, repower, repurpose or replace energy infrastructure" for the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment program (EIR). In this article, she highlights potential projects that could receive EIR funding, including large industrial complexes, like hospitals and college campuses, that have already made public commitments to reaching net zero. Questions still loom about the future of EIR loans, particularly about whether these loans will mostly be put to financing large institutions on their journey to net zero or, more ambitiously, to creating an entirely new market for abandoned gas stations and coal mines. Ms. McDonald explained that the answer will depend on the kinds of applications that start to come in.

“People are going to start to look at this when the other options start to be expended,” she said. “And because it’s such a new program, we just haven’t really seen a lot of folks start to do that. What the program essentially becomes will remain to be seen.”

READ: Biden’s $250 Billion Lure to Clean Up the Dirty Legacy of Fossil Fuels