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 Our team’s unwavering dedication to the advancement of LPO’s mission and Department-wide initiatives endured throughout the fourth quarter. While key achievements are featured in the recently published LPO Year in Review 2023 blog, I’d also like to highlight a few of them below.
LPO Portfolio Projects
During the last quarter, LPO worked relentlessly to prepare for the LongPath conditional commitment announcement. The loan guarantee to Colorado-based LongPath Technologies, Inc. will support the fabrication and installation of a real-time methane emissions monitoring network in U.S. oil and gas production basins. If finalized, the project is estimated to prevent at least six million tons of carbon dioxide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions annually.
Also, as reported in LPO’s first Workforce Spotlight, I participated in a community roundtable with CelLink in Georgetown, Texas, where I saw the incredible partnerships being built with the local community college to train the growing clean energy workforce. LPO announced a conditional commitment for $362 million in May; and if the deal is finalized, it will help expand the company’s manufacturing of wiring harnesses for electric vehicles. The project would create about 1,400 jobs and displace an estimated 7.7 million gallons of gasoline per year.
Reflecting a little more broadly on other progress achieved during 2023, LPO reached seven new conditional commitments under the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) Loan Program, supporting the manufacture of eligible vehicles and qualifying components (as detailed in our Portfolio Projects page). In 2023, through the Title 17 Clean Energy Financing Program, we also advanced LPO’s mission to finance projects in the United States that support clean energy deployment and energy infrastructure reinvestment to reduce GHG emissions and air pollution.This includes two exciting announcements: (1) LPO's closing of a $3 billion partial loan guarantee to Sunnova Energy Corporation’s Project Hestia, our first deal involving virtual power plants; and (2) a conditional commitment to Eos Energy Enterprises, Inc. for an up to $398.6 million loan guarantee, our first stationary storage deal.
Liftoff Activities
In December, DOE’s webinar Innovative Grid Deployment Pathways to Commercial Liftoff Sneak Peak provided early insights from the forthcoming Innovative Grid Deployment Liftoff Report (set for release in early 2024), including four priority technologies identified for greater near-term deployment. The new Liftoff Report will also explore strategies to accelerate deployment of innovative but commercially available grid technologies, which are crucial for bolstering grid reliability, resilience, and efficiency.
In conjunction with this webinar—and as a part of LPO’s role in the Pathways to Commercial Liftoff initiative, to help drive public and private-sector engagement that will be critical to an effective clean energy industrial strategy—we released the new illustrated poster on Transmission.
New Resources for Borrowers
During the fourth quarter, we also sustained a busy publishing schedule, including LPO’s new web pages on Good Governance and Credit Subsidy; four new installments of our Monthly Application Activity Report (MAAR), including the Annual Snapshot that featured modifications to monthly reporting sectors and key insights into application activity trends over the last year; new resources on Community Benefits Plans, in addition to the new quarterly Community Jobs & Justice newsletter; three new LPO Tech Talks (i.e., Electric Vehicle and Fleet Charging, Renewable Fuels and Chemicals, and Offshore Wind); and two new illustrated posters (i.e., Renewable Energy and Transmission).
We also released new educational blogs on LPO’s loan programs and project eligibility, such as the ATVM Loan Program, Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment (EIR) Program, and State Energy Financing Institution (SEFI)-supported projects—along with the webinar, How SEFIs are Designing Programs in Partnership with LPO.
Celebrating Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Turning Two
Two years into the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we are hard at work implementing it, including the SEFI and EIR project categories in the Title 17 Clean Energy Financing Program. Our team has identified at least 13 SEFIs across 11 states and is working with many more potentially qualifying institutions. We also introduced a SEFI Toolkit, which explains how LPO can supplement SEFI support for eligible projects.
Latest Application Activity
LPO's most recent MAAR saw continued interest in private sector-led, government-enabled project financing across American energy sectors. As of December 31, 2023, LPO has 202 active applications requesting a cumulative of nearly $215 billion in financing for proposed projects in nearly all fifty states, D.C., and Puerto Rico. For more insights into LPO's application activity over the past year, be sure to check out LPO's 2023 Annual Snapshot of MAAR reporting.
As we embark on this New Year, I am carrying forward the momentum from our recent accomplishments and proud of the key priorities that will continue to guide our efforts.
Sincerely,
 LPO Director Jigar Shah
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The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO) has announced a conditional commitment to LongPath Technologies, Inc. (LongPath) for an up to $189 million loan guarantee to support the fabrication and installation of a real-time methane emissions monitoring network in the Permian, Denver-Julesburg, and Anadarko oil and gas production basins across Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Texas. LongPath’s Active Emissions Overwatch System project aims to cover 25 million acres of land with large-area remote methane monitors, providing emissions detection, location, and quantification services for tens of thousands of oil and gas sites through a subscription service.
If finalized, the network is expected to prevent methane emissions equivalent to at least six million tons of carbon dioxide annually—that is like taking 1.3 million gasoline powered vehicles off the road—by enabling subscribers to identify and respond to methane leaks quickly. The project at its peak is anticipated to create an estimated 35 construction jobs and 266 operations jobs for regional workers, including trained experts to install and maintain the equipment, and provide competitive benefits.
As with all conditional commitments that LPO offers, it's important to note that the expected DOE loan will only be issued pending the satisfaction of certain conditions, including final legal, contractual, technical, and financial requirements that the conditional commitment specifies.
Read the LongPath conditional commitment announcement for more details.
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