Trump Officials Claim They Gutted This $400 Billion Climate Program. They Didn’t.

Trump administration officials, led by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, claimed in January they had dismantled the Department of Energy's $400 billion Loan Programs Office, a Biden-era clean energy lending initiative. Wright asserted he had scrubbed or revised roughly 80 percent of the office's Biden loan portfolio and rebranded it the "Energy Dominance Financing" program to align with Trump's fossil fuel agenda. However, former federal officials say the program has largely survived intact and continues funding major clean energy projects, including a $26.5 billion loan announced to Southern Company for nuclear plant upgrades and transmission line improvements in Georgia and Alabama. Wright overstated his revisions—many of the $30 billion in loans he claimed to have shut down were actually cancelled by borrowers themselves due to market conditions, not administration action. The office's current leader, Greg Beard, a former Apollo private equity executive, has so far only advanced projects that began under Biden, and his pipeline contains roughly 80 projects, less than half the 191 projects in the pipeline when Biden left office.