The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced three solicitations for a total of up to $30.5 billion in federal loan guarantees for projects that employ advanced energy technologies that avoid, reduce or sequester air pollutants or greenhouse gas emissions.
The three solicitations are in the areas of energy efficiency, renewable energy and advanced transmission and distribution technologies; nuclear power facilities; and advanced nuclear facilities for the ‘front-end’ of the nuclear fuel cycle. This marks the second round of solicitations for DOE’s Loan Guarantee Program.
In a Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 loan guarantee implementation plan sent to Congress in April, DOE outlined plans to issue its second round of solicitations concurrently no later than June 2008 for energy efficiency, renewable energy and advanced transmission and distribution projects (up to $10 billion); nuclear power facilities (up to $18.5 billion); and advanced nuclear facilities for the "front-end" of the nuclear fuel cycle (up to $2 billion).
The loan guarantee process is organized into four phases: application, project evaluation, conditional commitment, and final approval and closing of a Loan Guarantee Agreement. Selection criteria for the clean energy projects under these solicitations will focus on a project’s ability to avoid, reduce or sequester air pollutants or greenhouse gas emissions; the speed with which the technologies can be commercialized; the prospect of repayment of the guaranteed debt; and the potential for long-lasting success of these technologies in the marketplace.
Geothermal Funding
While the final documents have not been publicly released, reports indicate that the House Appropriations Committee on June 25 voted to approve a FY 2009 Energy and Water Appropriations bill, which will provide $50 million for the DOE Geothermal Research Program. In FY 2008, the DOE program was funded at $20 million, and the Administration had requested $30 million from Congress in its FY 2009 budget proposal.
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