Earlier today, the Department's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) announced $60 million for research and development projects aimed at reducing CO₂ emissions from passenger cars and light- and heavy-duty trucks. This builds on actions announced by the Biden Administration in April to accelerate the deployment of electric vehicles (EVs) and chargers.  DOE’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) can potentially support EV charging infrastructure in the following two ways: Deployment and Manufacturing.

First, through the Title 17 Innovative Energy Loan Guarantee Program, LPO can provide loan guarantees to support the domestic deployment of EV charging infrastructure, including associated hardware and software, in appropriate cases as distributed energy technology facilities, provided that such facilities otherwise satisfy all eligibility requirements. This program can help accelerate the commercial deployment of innovative EV charging technologies, which could potentially include among other technologies: DC fast charging, wireless charging, integrated energy storage, charging with demand response or bidirectional capabilities, or technology innovations that help overcome the unique challenges of charging in urban or rural settings.

Second, LPO can provide direct loans through the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) program to support the manufacturing of EV charging infrastructure and related components in the United States for eligible advanced technology vehicles. In addition to manufacturing EV charging infrastructure, debt capital from ATVM can help the U.S. be at the forefront of manufacturing along the entire EV value chain, which could, in addition to the advanced technology vehicles themselves, potentially include among other things: critical materials, batteries and their components, light weighting materials, and efficiency-oriented vehicle components, provided that they constitute qualifying components.

For more information about how LPO can support electric vehicles and alternative fuel vehicles infrastructure in the United States, visit /LPO/EV. To engage with LPO staff for a pre-application consultation for your project, please email LPO@hq.doe.gov. It would be helpful to provide a brief description of the project, preliminary fuel savings (for ATVM) or greenhouse gas avoided/reduction (for Title 17) estimates, estimated costs and timeline, and location (if known).