The Electric: The Biden Team Awards Battery Loans to the Last Minute

Jigar Shah, head of the Energy Department's Loan Programs Office. Photo by Getty

In the final days of a four-year campaign to reindustrialize the U.S., the Biden administration on Wednesday announced a conditional $1.3 billion loan to a lithium extraction project at the Salton Sea in California.

The loan to California-based EnergySource Minerals was the 39th made by the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office under President Joe Biden, totaling about $80 billion in conditional and finalized loans, the LPO said.