Illustration: Gabriella Turrisi / Axios
A top Energy Department official said Thursday that the Loan Programs Office will be a "tool" to prop up coal plants as well as build nuclear and geothermal plants.
Why it matters: Alex Fitzsimmons, DOE's chief of staff, delivered some of the first public comments on the agency's plans amid fears that staffing and funding cuts will undercut Biden-era programs.
- Secretary Chris Wright is scheduled to appear on the Hill as early as next week to defend DOE's budget, which will detail his reorganization plans.
Context: The office is a longtime GOP punching bag. During the Biden administration, Republicans accused its director, Jigar Shah, of running a green "slush fund."
Zoom in: The agency will lean on DOE loans to meet data-center energy demand at the 16 agency sites identified last month that could host data centers and energy infrastructure located next door.
- DOE could lease land at "nominal cost" and "obviously speed up the permitting," in part by avoiding building long-range transmission lines, Fitzsimmons said at the Energy Bar Association's annual conference.
- "We're exploring different business models," he said. "You combine that with some low-cost DOE financing if you want to build nuclear or geothermal or any other kind of next-generation technology."
That extends to coal plants, he added: "We need every megawatt of affordable, reliable power we can get."
- The loan office "doesn't score" in budget reconciliation, he pointed out.
- "Only the credit subsidy scores, and you can get a ton of loan value out of a small amount of subsidy," he said. "When you're looking to advance several priorities at once, it's a pretty flexible tool."
Zoom out: Fitzsimmons addressed questions about how the agency can carry out its mission while cutting staff at LPO and other offices.
- "We all have to do more with less," Fitzsimmons said in a response to a question from a former Grid Deployment Office staffer who said the office was reduced 80%. (The Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations has sustained a similar staffing reduction.)
Yes, but: Interior's pledge to complete environmental reviews for energy projects within 28 days could create more legal challenges from rushed decisions.
- "We're challenging conventional wisdom about how long permitting takes," Fitzsimmons acknowledged. "They say we can't do an EIS in 30 days — why not?"
The bottom line: Fitzsimmons said the Trump 2.0 energy message underlying everything is "Whatever we do, we have to do it faster."
