nick.nigro@atlaspolicy.com

The manufacturer Calumet said the funding process is back on track for its subsidiary, Montana Renewables, which plans to expand its biofuels facility in Great Falls, Montana. The company currently makes fuel for planes and trucks using seed oils and discarded animal fats. With the expansion, the refinery will be able to produce about 315 million gallons per year, most of which will be sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF.

Amogy, which was founded by three Massachusetts Institute of Technology PhD graduates, aims to help decarbonize sectors like maritime shipping that are viewed as more difficult to shift away from fossil fuels. To do that, it created a chemical reactor that ​“cracks” ammonia — a compound often used in products like fertilizer — into nitrogen and hydrogen. The hydrogen then goes through a fuel cell that can power vessels, trucks, and other machinery, while the nitrogen is released into the air.

The Biden administration offered a $1.76 billion conditional loan guarantee for GEM A-CAES, a wholly owned subsidiary of Canadian startup Hydrostor. That federal backing will help secure financing for the Willow Rock advanced compressed-air energy storage (A-CAES) project planned near the town of Rosamond in California’s eastern Kern County.

In northeastern Oregon, nearly 9,500 acres of farmland will soon be transformed into a 1,200-megawatt solar project. State regulators approved Sunstone Solar, the nation’s largest proposed solar-plus-storage facility, last fall. Once up and running, the project will include up to 7,200 megawatt-hours of storage, and its nearly four million solar panels will produce enough clean electricity to power around 800,000 homes each year. Pine Gate Renewables, the North Carolina–based developer behind the project, touted a first-of-a-kind initiative to invest up to $11 million in local wheat farms to offset economic impacts on the region’s agriculture. Construction will begin in 2026.

LPO on Friday afternoon finalized a $996 million loan guarantee for Ioneer​’s Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project, a massive lithium and boron mining and processing facility in Nevada. That final commitment ​“upsized” the initial $700 million conditional commitment offered to Ioneer by DOE in early 2023.

The LPO announced it closed a loan guarantee of up to $1.66 billion for Plug Power, a manufacturer of fuel cells and hydrogen electrolyzers. The guarantee is meant to help the company attract financing to build up to six facilities that will produce hydrogen with low or zero carbon emissions using its electrolyzers.

Commercial solar firm Sunwealth also closed a $289.7 million loan guarantee on Thursday to help finance the buildout of commercial solar and storage systems that will form the basis of new virtual power plants in 27 states.

Google X spinout Dandelion Energy and major U.S. homebuilder Lennar unveiled a partnership that aims to prove that proposition. The companies have pledged to build ground-source geothermal into more than 1,500 new homes in Colorado over the next two years, starting with Lennar’s Ken-Caryl Ranch development in Littleton, Colorado.

PosiGen, a New Orleans–based rooftop-solar company, last month (December 2024) secured an additional $200 million in funding from Brookfield Asset Management. PosiGen caters to lower-income homeowners who are often overlooked by the big residential solar players.

UPROSE has been working to develop the Sunset Park Solar project since 2017, as part of its broader vision for curbing excessive air pollution and creating climate resiliency in the neighborhood. After years of forming partnerships, and repairs to the building’s rooftop, the solar array is finally expected to begin producing power by the end of this year.