https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2025/04/21/end_the_green_new_scam_loan_machine_1105095.html
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) was created to help advance clean-energy infrastructure and technologies that allegedly had the potential to be adequate energy resources but struggled to secure private investment. With discussions underway about staffing and budget changes, defenders of the climate-centric status quo in energy policy rushed to preserve it, claiming LPO is essential for energy dominance and manufacturing growth.
In reality, LPO is a taxpayer-backed ATM for unreliable energy technologies and infrastructure that can’t compete without federal funding.
Before the end of his presidency, Joe Biden squeezed in $25 billion in LPO loans for various green energy projects, attempting to undercut President Donald Trump’s energy plans. Advocates will claim these loans and others supported critical infrastructure such as battery storage, transmission upgrades, and flexible demand response. However, these investments primarily offset the deficiencies of intermittent energy sources like wind and solar. Rather than strengthening a reliable grid, such investments introduce arbitrary costs to accommodate unreliable generation.
While making notable and worthwhile investments in reliable nuclear technology, LPO has overwhelmingly become a central gear in the “green new scam” machinery: a system built on subsidies and climate ideology, not competition or energy realism.
The problem isn’t just taxpayer waste. It also distorts energy markets and destroys grid reliability.
LPO’s funding of intermittent energy sources and the Inflation Reduction Act’s green subsidies have wreaked havoc on how our grid operators and energy markets balance affordability in power-generation planning. These sources don’t operate on the same terms as traditional baseload or dispatchable generation. Instead, they rely on favorable regulatory treatment and financial backstopping from taxpayers. That imbalance leads to capacity shortfalls, distorted price signals, and reliability risks that compound over time.
These green energy schemes disconnect energy policies from the reality that American families and businesses need abundant, affordable, and reliable power—not experiments based on luxury beliefs.
This is particularly damaging in electricity markets like PJM, which serves Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and most mid-Atlantic states. Regional transmission organizations like PJM reward performance and reliability through transparent price competition. However, when LPO-backed intermittent projects bypass those dynamics through guaranteed government financing and special regulatory treatment, the result is suppressed prices for reliable generators and disincentives for investment in reliable energy capacity. Over time, this pattern erodes the reliability that energy-rich states like Pennsylvania have long delivered.
