Exclusive: Meet the newest energy tech deployment player
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A new organization is launching to improve federal support for commercial deployment of a range of energy tech, with initial focus on the Energy Department's loan office.
Why it matters: The Energy Infrastructure Alliance Forum (EIAF) aims to fill what organizers call a need for a broad-based push that complements others' ongoing work on specific tech and finance streams.
The big picture: "We really haven't had an organization solely focused on the commercialization or deployment of energy technologies as a whole," said Taite McDonald, a partner at Holland & Knight who is co-founder and a board member of EIAF.
Driving the news: The group's website went live on Friday, and it recently incorporated with 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) arms, which enable a range of communications, advocacy and lobbying work.
- It formalizes ad-hoc work that various industry players and advocates have been doing for over a decade, organizers said.
- Others involved include board member and ML Strategies senior vice president John Lushetsky, a former DOE official who advised the loan office; and board member Nick Loris, the executive VP of policy at the Conservative Coalition for Climate Solutions.
What's next: The group is searching for a full-time executive director. It then hopes to add staff as it aims to help technologies cross the "commercialization valley of death."
- It has seed funding and is looking to expand backing from philanthropies and other sources, the organizers say.
State of play: DOE's loan program — rechristened as the Office of Energy Dominance Financing — has $289 billion in available loan authority.
- EIAF is bullish on the office's potential for transformative finance in areas like nuclear, critical minerals, transmission, long-duration storage and geothermal projects.
- But it also has policy and legislative recommendations — spelled out in its first paper — to boost the program's influence by removing friction.
- The group could also focus in the future on other parts of DOE too, like the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy and the national labs.
Zoom in: Goals for the loan office include...
- "Clearer pathways for expedited review of commercially ready projects."
- Closer collaboration with the Defense Department, U.S. development finance agencies and beyond.
- A more proactive role in working with technologies that are "underrepresented in its pipeline but critical to energy dominance."
- Changing "direct and indirect limitations" on federal support for projects working with multiple DOE programs.
The bottom line: "Our focus is always to try to maximize those opportunities when possible, and reduce some of the frictions that you've seen historically when trying to work with an agency to test different technologies and to commercialize different technologies," Loris said.
- It's also looking long-term to "ensure that this program is successful from one administration to the next, whether it is a Republican to Democrat or Republican to Republican," he said.
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