Biden Admin to Give Unprecedented $15 Billion Climate Change Handout to California Company: Report

The Biden administration announced it is providing a record $15 billion low-interest loan to the California utility company PG&E, which is part of a push to get as much green money out the door as possible before President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month.

“The loan by the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office is slated to fund projects that refurbish PG&E’s hydroelectric infrastructure and upgrade power lines to support renewable energy projects, data centers, and electric vehicles,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

The second largest commitment under the program was a $9.6 billion loan to Ford Motor’s battery joint venture, which the office completed Monday as part of its clean energy lending program.

All told, the LPO has made more than $42.4 billion in loan commitments and over $24.1 billion in closed loans and guarantees, according to the Journal.

The misnamed Inflation Reduction Act “turbocharged the office’s lending capacity,” the news outlet said.

When the LPO enters into a contract with companies such as PG&E future administrations cannot claw back the cash.

The Journal noted that PG&E faced challenges raising money from Wall Street after it went through “complex bankruptcy restructuring” after it was held liable for its power lines sparking deadly wildfires in 2019.

“The company is under state regulatory pressure to limit rate increases for customers. Electricity rates throughout California, long among the highest in the nation, have surged in recent years as utilities work to address wildfire risk and meet the state’s clean-energy targets,” the news outlet said.

Put another way, California’s green energy requirements are making PG&E’s product expensive, and the American taxpayer will now be funding the Democrats’ utopian dream because the free market apparently won’t.

Chris Creed, chief investment officer of the LPO, confirmed as much.

The loan to PG&E “will help meet forecasted electricity demand growth, ensure system reliability, and dramatically reduce costs for its customers,” Creed said.

Mari Becker, PG&E’s treasurer and vice president of internal audit, explained, “It’s a project that’s very important in support of our objectives around customer affordability.”

The demand for electricity in the Golden State is only expected to increase in the years ahead, with California’s mandates regarding electrical vehicle use and the phasing out of fossil fuel usage in homes and offices.

In addition to PG&E and Ford, another high-profile recipient of a green loan was the EV start-up Rivian, which received a $6.6 billion commitment to help expand a plant in Georgia.

Semafor reported in early December that Biden’s LPO also committed to a $7.5 billion loan to automaker Stellantis (manufacturer of Jeep, Dodge, and Chrysler among other brands) for two EV battery factories in Indiana.

The LPO was all but shut down during Trump’s first term, only overseeing half a dozen proposals, but now its portfolio is over 200 strong.

“It will be very difficult for the Trump administration to undo those projects without extreme blowback from all over the country,” Dan Reicher, a former senior Department of Energy official, told Semafor.

It feels inevitable that some of these loans will lead to a Solyndra moment when the solar energy company went bankrupt during the Obama administration, leaving the American taxpayer on the hook for over $500 million.

Similar to selling off materials owned by the federal government needed to finish building Trump’s southern border wall for pennies on the dollar, moving tens of billions of dollars of green energy funding out the door is another way the Biden administration is seeking to thwart its successor.

Given this administration’s treatment of the former president, the cynical conduct was predictable, but still a shame.

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