The US Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) has announced US$22.92bn in conditional loans across eight projects that retool or replace energy infrastructure that has stopped operating or that enables reductions in emissions blamed for global warming. The eight projects are distributed along 12 US states, and support transmission, clean generation, energy storage, grid modernisation, and gas pipeline investments.
Among the awarded companies is Alliant Energy, which plans to replace the coal generation with cleaner power in its facilities located in Iowa and Wisconsin. The company will receive over US$3bn to add around 2 GW of wind power and battery storage in the two States.
In Michigan, DTE Electric seeks to install thousands of MWs of renewable energy generation and storage (worth over US$7bn), while Consumers Energy plans to invest its US$5bn loan on the retirement of its three remaining coal facilities to replace them with 1.8 GW of solar generation, wind generation, battery storage, and virtual power plant projects and on the replacement of old gas pipelines.