Jigar Shah

And yes, those climate objectives helped pass the laws necessary to make the first-of-a-kind projects happen. So, look, it's all part of a whole, right? But I want to make sure that we're crystal clear about... And I think the president has been quite clear about this having to relate to jobs and everyday lives.

And the secretary has been very clear about the fact that this has to make people's lives better. And I do think it makes people's lives better. And that's what entrepreneurs thrive on, right? It's like, you know, Elon Musk wants a car that goes zero to 60 in like 1.9 seconds. And he created that car and people want that car. And that's awesome.

So in 2005, Senator Pete Domenici and others said, hey, why do we invent everything here in the United States, but then send our awesome technology overseas? And people realized, well, when you look at the industrial strategy of Germany or Canada or China or other places, they actually support the commercialization of those technologies. And so the loan programs office was born.

We're basically a bank within the U.S. Department of Energy. And it is supposed to take that risk of building that first project. When commercial banks are not comfortable with putting the loan out the door for that first project, because remember, these projects don't have venture capital-like returns.

You can't put in a billion dollars of venture capital into something and get a 10x return on that. These are infrastructure projects that generate... 10% returns. And so you need to have low-cost affordable debt, but you also need to recognize that most of these banks do not have the expertise to evaluate the technology that people are bringing to them.

Whereas Department of Energy has 10,000 plus scientists, experts, and engineers on the platform, many of whom invented the technologies And probably provided some of the money for demonstrations, etc. And so the loan programs office operates like a commercial bank, but has this mandate to lose money to make sure that we are commercializing technologies here in the United States.

And oh, along the way, we haven't actually lost money. We've made money for the federal government.

Well, remember, I think starting in around 2018, there were huge funds that were created to support the next generation of climate companies. And then that number continued to expand exponentially, right, in 2019, 2020, 2021. And there were thousands of companies that got investment from the private sector. And so part of, I think, what

the Biden administration realized was that we had this moment again where those companies could either build things here in the United States or they could go overseas. And a lot of those companies were starting to become ready to commercialize here. And I think that at the core of this, there was a recognition that these projects were going to be big.

So when you think about, for instance, the three biggest automakers and the battery manufacturing plants that they're building, each one of those plants were multi-billion dollar endeavors. And so I think it was very clear by the time we got into 2022 and the legislative session that the loan programs office needed to be beefed up. And so

We were seeing so much interest in using the loan programs office. And there were tons of libertarian folks who were like, wait a second, I don't think I'm going to be able to get this company to scale and exit unless we figure out a beefed up loan programs office.

Yeah, I mean, so the identities of the actual loan applicants are confidential, but I can maybe talk about it from a sector perspective.

Yeah, I can certainly do that. I think, so there's some broad categories, right? Clearly, battery manufacturing has been a huge highlight of our industry. four years in office. And so you've got 400 gigawatt hours worth of battery manufacturing. But then you've got critical minerals production facilities here in the United States that are going to feed those battery manufacturing facilities.

And remember, auto companies are some of the most sophisticated companies in the world from a supply chain standpoint. They have to buy stuff from many, many countries and assemble it all into one place. And so they're also very nervous about 90% of processed critical minerals coming from China.

And so we're now on track with the lithium loans that we provide to Thacker Pass, the conditional commitment to Rhylite Ridge, Ioneer in Nevada, the graphite processing facility in Vidalia. Louisiana. We have a number of grants that the manufacturing supply chain office provided to folks.

We're now on track to fully meeting our lithium needs by either the end of this decade or the early part of the next decade.

And it's next generation technology. So we're not just taking stuff that's already being done and deploying it here. This is all next generation technology. And that we have proprietary access to because we invented it here at the U.S. Department of Energy and at the National Labs. And we're going to make sure that we scale that up here.

I think people just don't understand that we're not competing with China. What we're saying is that there's a number of technologies that are the next generation beyond what China is doing now.

And so when you look at the next generation anode and cathode materials, the next generation battery separator materials, all of that stuff is things that came out of the loan programs office and or, you know, some of the other offices within the Undersecretary for Infrastructure. And I have no doubt in my mind that the very best – long-range batteries in the world will come out of the U.S.

by the end of the decade. And that is not something I could confidently say four years ago. And that doesn't even get to some of the other sectors like modernizing our grid or virtual power plants or other things. And so today we have 212 loan applications across about 13 sectors seeking $324 billion.