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A column chart that illustrates the U.S. Export-Import Bank's low-carbon energy financing from fiscal years 2020 to 2024. Authorized amounts increased significantly from $92.6 million in 2020 to $2.3 billion in 2024, highlighting a notable upward trend in financing for low-carbon energy initiatives.

Export-Import Bank financing for low-carbon energy

Data: Export-Import Bank of the U.S.; Chart: Axios Visuals

The U.S. Export-Import Bank more than doubled its support for low-carbon energy in fiscal 2024.

Why it matters: The bank has played a pivotal role helping climate startups compete overseas — a role that could shrink dramatically under a second Trump administration. 

Catch up fast: The Export-Import Bank, also known as EXIM, provides financing to U.S. manufacturers and foreign buyers of American products.

The idea is to help American companies compete in overseas markets, where local rivals may get government subsidies, and to enable foreign customers to buy expensive U.S. products such as airplanes. 

Driving the news: EXIM in recent years has accelerated its financing for climate-focused companies. Four of the agency's five biggest clean energy deals occurred in the past fiscal year alone, which ended Sept. 30.

Zoom in: Beta Technologies, developing electric aircraft in Vermont, received a $169 million loan to subsidize an assembly plant to eventually supply customers in Canada, India, Japan, and New Zealand.

Other top deals include a $1.6 billion loan to build 65 American-supplied solar and storage mini-grids in Angola, $297 million to harness waste heat in Iraq using technology from Jacksonville-based Stellar Energy Americas, and $98 million to develop a U.S. small modular reactor in Romania.

Anovion, a startup developing synthetic graphite for batteries, this month received a letter of interest from EXIM for up to $400 million in debt or as a loan backstop for a first-of-a-kind plant in Georgia.

Reality check: The deals together pale in comparison with what the Energy Department or Defense Department spend on climate tech — one reason EXIM is often overlooked by climate founders and funders.

Yes, but: Climate startups still struggle to convince risk-averse banks to finance manufacturing plants for novel tech, which has made EXIM financing one of the few sources of non-dilutive capital.

👀 What we're watching: EXIM's low-carbon dealmaking has occurred as the bank has rebuilt from the first Trump administration, which saw the bank as corporate welfare.

"You're going to see those two factions within the administration," Todd Moss, executive director of think tank Energy for Growth Hub, tells Axios. "That EXIM bank could be a tool to promote U.S. trade, but there's definitely going to be a faction that does not like the agency and will probably try to gut it."

The U.S. is pouring money into clean energy exports

Export-Import financing more than doubled from last year.

Climate tech

The U.S. Export-Import Bank more than doubled its support for low-carbon energy in fiscal 2024.Why it matters: The bank has played a pivotal role helping climate startups compete overseas — a role that could shrink dramatically under a second Trump administration.

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The U.S. is pouring money into clean energy exports

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