The Trump administration is canceling a $4.9 billion loan guarantee for what would be one of the nation’s largest transmission projects — a 780-mile power line being developed to bring renewable energy from the Great Plains to cities in the East.
The Energy Department said Wednesday that its Loan Programs Office has terminated a commitment for the first phase of the Grain Belt Express project, a 542-mile high-voltage direct current power line stretching from southwest Kansas to Missouri.
The announcement is the latest setback for the $11 billion project that began more than a decade ago — one of numerous clean energy projects that got a boost in the final days of the Biden administration when DOE announced the award of a conditional loan guarantee to the project’s developer, Chicago-based Invenergy. And it’s another blow to renewable energy and associated projects that have been targeted in White House executive orders and the recently passed Republican megalaw.
Officials with the energy developer led by billionaire Michael Polsky didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the project’s future.
