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    DOE Delaying First Tranche of $1.44B Loan Guarantee for Massive Biofuels Expansion in Montana

    Jan. 30, 2025
    The loan facility was approved to fund the construction and expansion of the renewable fuels facility in Great Falls, Montana, owned by Montana Renewables.
    Image credit Montana Renewables
    679be2eee91a4c8b8aa4c508 Montana

    President Trump’s freeze on funding for renewable energy resources through the Inflation Reduction Act is necessitating a delay on financing for a massive seeds-to-sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) project which had been finalized only a few weeks ago.

    The U.S Department of Energy (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO) has informed Indiana-based Calumet about a planned delay for the first tranche of approximately $782 million under the guaranteed $1.44 billion loan facility approved for funding and which closed earlier in January–prior to President Trump taking office on Jan. 20.

    The loan facility was approved to fund the construction and expansion of the renewable fuels facility in Great Falls, Montana, owned by Montana Renewables (MRL), an unrestricted subsidiary of Calumet. Last week, the president issued a flurry of executive orders freezing grant and loan funding on numerous Biden Administration clean energy initiatives.

    The uncertainty over those orders is causing a delay for the project which was designed to convert billions of pounds of seed oil annually into SAF and biofuels to decarbonize the aviation and transportation sectors.

    "We are well aligned with White House priorities to support domestic agriculture, energy security, technical innovation and energy independence, all of which play a role in the tremendous bipartisan support this loan has received since its inception," said Todd Borgmann, CEO of Calumet, in a statement.  "The recently issued executive order specifically highlights the importance of biofuels to our nation's domestic energy policy and energy independence, and we look forward to a quick review confirming that we are aligned with the Administration's goals."

    Trump’s orders called for a movement to deal with “a national energy emergency” and also called the fate of renewable, energy efficiency and distributed energy projects into question. Many of these renewable or decarbonizing technologies were recipients of funding and tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress and signed into law nearly three years ago.

    An economic impact study by the University of Montana Bureau of Business and Economic Research measured the expansion's benefit to Montana in the form of jobs, income, government revenues, economic output and population.

    MRL expects the expansion to spur additional regional development, particularly for renewable feedstocks sourced from farms and ranches. MRL will create a large-scale, end-to-end SAF industry of public and private partners in Montana and the Pacific Northwest by driving local infrastructure development in transportation, agricultural and energy related businesses similar to the Minnesota SAF Hub.

    The current facility, which Montana Renewables opened in 2022, produces close to 140 million gallons of biofuels per year, the company reported. 

    The MRL expansion is anticipated to create 450 construction jobs and up to 40 operations jobs.

     

    About the Author

    Rod Walton, EnergyTech Managing Editor | Senior Editor

    For EnergyTech editorial inquiries, please contact Managing Editor Rod Walton at [email protected].

    Rod Walton has spent 15 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist. He formerly was energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World. Later, he spent six years covering the electricity power sector for Pennwell and Clarion Events. He joined Endeavor and EnergyTech in November 2021.

    Walton earned his Bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. His career stops include the Moore American, Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, Wagoner Tribune and Tulsa World. 

    EnergyTech is focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids. The C&I sectors together account for close to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

    He was named Managing Editor for Microgrid Knowledge and EnergyTech starting July 1, 2023

    Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.

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