U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm knows time is not on her side.
President Joe Biden has 18 months left until the next inauguration day, with no guarantees he can hold onto the White House and continue pushing his agenda to fight climate change with massive subsidies for electric vehicles. The Department of Energy has to hurry if it wants to allocate the tens of billions in grants and loans made available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act.
In some respects, the Energy Department has slipped behind schedule. When it announced the first $2.8 billion in grants funded by the infrastructure law last October, the goal was to disburse the money to 20 grantees by April. It’s now mid July, and just four companies have received the money.
