Plug Power, Which Got A Last-Minute $1.66B Loan Guarantee From DOE, Reports $2.1B Loss

The “green” hydrogen company’s 2024 losses were nearly triple its 2022 losses of $724 million. Given its lousy financial condition, why did the Biden DOE give it a loan guarantee?

In 2021, Plug Power was surfing the wave of hydrogen hype. Its stock was selling for $66 per share, and the company said it was going to replace diesel fuel in transportation systems with “green hydrogen.” One of its presentations claimed, “our sales pipeline is robust and diverse.”

That was four years ago.

Yesterday, Plug reported a $2.1 billion loss for 2024, its stock price is falling, and the company is headed for bankruptcy. As I explained here on January 19, the Loan Programs Office, then headed by Jigar Shah, extended a $1.66 billion loan guarantee to Plug four days before Donald Trump was inaugurated. It announced the deal on January 16. In doing so, it ignored a December 17, 2024, report by the DOE’s Inspector General that urged the agency to halt all loans and loan guarantees until it could ensure that it is complying with “conflicts of interest regulations and enforcing conflict of interest contractual obligations.”

Plug’s shaky financial condition was apparent in January when the LPO extended the loan guarantee. In fact, Plug has been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy since November of 2023, when it warned investors about its ability to continue as a going concern. So why did the LPO give the company a loan guarantee?

Let’s take a closer look at the Plug story, which provides yet another example of how the Biden administration’s energy policies — and spending — were guided by ideology instead of realism.