Beating the ‘Cold Start Problem’ in Clean Tech: Sparklines

The Loan Programs Office (LPO), a division of the US Department of Energy, is charged with giving government-backed loans to clean energy companies trying to scale up new technologies. The office originated during the Bush administration, was active through the Obama years and went quiet — to say the least — under the Trump administration.

Perhaps a better way to say it is that from 2017 through 2021, the LPO was in a sort of suspended animation. Only a single project, the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia, received a government guarantee, according to the office’s timeline .

But with the start of the Biden presidency and the ...