39. Chris Creed, DOE Loan Programs Office: big loans, EVs, batteries, energy transition, US infrastructure, lithium, commercial liftoff

Interested in a piece of a $400 billion pie from which Tesla once took a $465MM bite?  Chris Creed, Chief Investment Officer of the Department of Energy’s Loan Program’s Office spoke to me about how the pie is made available to innovators or scalers in renewable energy and energy infrastructure.  He discussed suitable projects, financial metrics and loan terms.   Recent LPO facilities include the subject of our Episode 33, the ACES Delta hydrogen storage program,  $2.2BN for Nevada’s Thacker Lithium Mine, and GM’s Ultium and Ford’s BlueOval battery efforts.  Chris works with Jigar Shah, Director of the LPO and co-founder of Sun Edison.  

You can read the related article here in 3 minutes.    The LPO monthly activity report is here.  

Time stamps below. On some podcast players you can click the timestamp to jump to it.

(0:00) Introduction

(2:26) Chris Creed and intro to the LPO

(6:30) Chris’ background

(9:55) “Bridge to bankability”; innovation; infrastructure

(14:40) The kinds of risks LPO will take

(21:57) Terms, conditions & diligence

(27:01) Community benefits

(29:19) The role of large/small companies and private debt/equity

(36:37) Related Tech Cars Machines episodes

Host: Ali Tabibian of GTK Partners. 

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