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Donald Trump has frozen billions of dollars in Energy Department loans for clean energy projects. But on Feb. 7, he quietly blessed one deal cut in the final days of Joe Biden’s presidency: a $782 million loan guarantee to a company expanding a biofuels plant in Great Falls, Montana.
Montana Renewables, which makes jet fuel and diesel out of plant oils, beef tallow and other waste fats, signed a $1.67 billion loan deal with the Energy Department on Jan. 10 as part of a flurry of nearly $50 billion in loans the Energy Department closed in the last two months of Biden’s term.
Montana Renewables is a subsidiary of Indianapolis-based Calumet Specialty Products Partners LP. Calumet launched Montana Renewables in 2021 with the goal of becoming one of the top renewable diesel producers in North America.
Like other Energy Department loan recipients—which borrowed money to fund everything from solar panel factories to lithium mines—Montana Renewables saw its loan frozen after Trump took office and vowed to cut back clean energy projects. On Jan. 28, when Montana Renewables was supposed to get the first half of its money, the Energy Department had held up the cash “to confirm alignment with White House priorities,” the company said.
Two weeks later, Montana Renewables became the first company to get its Energy loan money under Trump. The Energy Department is still reviewing other companies’ loans “to ensure all activities are consistent with the law and in accordance with President Trump’s executive orders and priorities,” an Energy Department spokesperson said.
With cash in hand, Montana Renewables can start a long-planned project to expand a factory that turns fat into diesel and jet fuel, CEO Bruce Fleming said. The company is North America’s biggest producer of sustainable aviation fuel, which is generally made from waste fat instead of petroleum and produces at least 50% less greenhouse pollution over its lifetime than standard jet fuel.
Montana Renewables plans to boost its annual jet fuel output from 30 million gallons to 300 million gallons by 2028, Fleming said. That would still be a drop in the bucket compared with global commercial jet fuel consumption, which neared 19 billion gallons last year, according to the Transportation Department. But it would go a long way toward fulfilling Biden’s goal of boosting U.S. sustainable jet fuel production to 3 billion gallons per year by 2030.
The expansion is expected to create about 450 construction jobs and 40 permanent operations jobs at the facility.
The conditional commitment for the loan guarantee consisted of two phases, Calumet said, with the balance to be disbursed between the beginning of construction in 2025 and the project’s expected completion in 2028.
Like many clean energy executives in the Trump era, Fleming downplayed the project’s connection to climate change. He said the project would benefit Western farmers and cattle ranchers and improve U.S. energy security in line with Trump’s priorities. He added that the company applied for its loan before Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, his landmark climate bill, in 2022.
“This is not the Green New Deal,” Fleming said. “So once that was clear to everybody, I think we’re an example of what [the Trump administration] do want to support.”
Most projects that have gotten Energy Department loans are in states represented by Republican lawmakers. Montana Renewables had bipartisan support from former Democratic senator Jon Tester, who lost his recent reelection bid, and Republican Sen. Steve Daines, who urged Trump and Energy Department officials to approve the project.
“I am glad to see that President Trump’s DOE is focused on bolstering Made-In-America energy and I’ll continue to fight for more ways to support Montana’s mining and energy industries,” Daines wrote in a statement.
Executives at other companies vying for DOE loans believe that some of their projects may get axed under Trump.
“I’m sure they’ll find something where they go, ‘No, I think not,’” said Pat Gruber, CEO of Gevo, a biofuels and chemicals company that’s waiting for the Trump administration to sign off on a $1.46 billion loan guarantee to finance a South Dakota factory that will turn corn starch into jet fuel.
At least one company has downsized its project after going through years of vetting for a DOE loan. Battery maker KORE Power got conditional approval in 2023 for an $850 million loan to build a new factory in Arizona. But on Jan. 31, the company said it had abandoned that plan and would instead buy and retrofit an existing factory to save money and speed up the project. Founder and CEO Lindsay Gorrill resigned shortly after.
A company spokesperson said KORE Power decided to change its plans before Trump took office and that the company would still try to close a smaller DOE loan to fund its cheaper factory plan.
Under the first Trump administration, the LPO closed one deal to lend $3.7 billion to build a nuclear plant in Georgia. But under Biden, the office closed 25 deals worth $61 billion and reached the conditional stage—the last step before closing—on another 28 projects worth $47 billion. the staff grew from less than 100 people to more than 400 full-time employees and contractors, and Congress gave the office power to lend an extra $100 billion through the Inflation Reduction Act.
Jigar Shah, the Biden-appointed LPO director who recruited many staffers from the private sector, left the office shortly after Trump’s inauguration. If many staffers join him, it may be difficult for the office to monitor and disburse the roughly $100 billion in closed loans for ongoing projects and vet the current backlog of applications for more than $200 billion in new loans.
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