There are some GOP lawmakers that are encouraging delicacy — a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer — in repealing parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, as President Donald Trump wants to do. A small group of House Republicans has even issued a letter in support of the law’s clean energy tax credits provisions. That said, only one GOP member has zeroed in on an individual project associated with the IRA, championed it publicly — and seen results.
On February 11, Montana Senator Steve Daines made an unexpected announcement. After pressing officials at the Department of Energy, the Loan Programs Office had unfrozen a $1.44-billion loan to Montana Renewables — and disbursed more than half of the funds, or about $782 million. The company is a subsidiary of the Indiana-based Calumet, which manufactures petroleum-based fuels, lubricants and solvents. Calumet’s facility in Great Falls, Montana, consists of a crude oil refinery and a facility for producing sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and renewable diesel.
The loan will enable Calumet to more than double its production to over 300 million gallons of SAF annually, equivalent to about half of all the SAF in North America.
The disbursement came as a surprise, and not only because of Daines’ involvement. President Donald Trump has been clear about his animosity to the IRA, which directed billions to the DOE loan program; he paused all related funding for 90 days on his first day in office, a pause that has more than a month left to go. And new LPO director John Sneed has reportedly suggested to staff that he plans to prioritize nuclear power and natural gas.
As of this writing, Calumet’s remains the only Biden-era LPO loan confirmed to be unfrozen since Trump took office. And that’s in part thanks to Sen. Daines’ powers of persuasion — and the project’s emphasis on jobs and a local supply chain, both watchwords for the Trump administration.
“Montana Renewables and the Calumet refinery provide high-paying jobs, boost our economy and provide efficient biofuel production,” Senator Daines told Latitude Media via email. “I worked directly with the Department of Energy to make sure that Montana’s best interests were represented, and I am glad to see that President Trump’s administration is focused on bolstering Made-In-America energy.”
Montana Renewables’ appeal
Bruce Fleming, Montana Renewables CEO and Calumet’s executive vice president of corporate development, offered specific evidence of the project’s economic appeal.
For one, he cited a study conducted by the University of Montana Bureau of Business and Economic Research, which concluded that the refinery expansion will indirectly create nearly 4,000 jobs in the state. (Daines has previously stated that the expansion itself will create an estimated 500 jobs.)
Fleming also argued that the supply chain for creating SAF in Montana, which involves processing beef tallow and seed oils into jet fuel, would present a boon for local farmers and ranchers in particular.
“I go to more ag meetings than I go to transportation fuel meetings,” he told Latitude Media. “Those people are very interested in how some of that money can fall their way. Shortening these supply chains, collecting things like carbon intensity credits from the low carbon fuel standard folks, delivering across geographical boundaries: this is a consortium.”
As for whether other LPO projects in limbo can learn from Calumet’s success, Fleming also emphasized the importance of pitching a project that compliments a state’s existing economic strengths.
“Montana needs an economy that’s sustainable. Montana is a resource extraction state, and the resource might be coal, minerals, timber, or harvested crops and ranch products,” Fleming said. “You have to sustain the population. You can’t be a dying state, where the next generation does not take over the family farm.”
I was surprised that Fleming stressed that he “was in zero calls, zero meetings and zero communications of any kind” with any of Montana’s congresspeople in advance of Daines’ announcement. That said, Fleming acknowledged that Montana Renewables is “very close” to all four officials. (Montana has two senators, and two representatives in the House.)
The conservative clean energy advocate Rich Powell attested to the value of these ongoing relationships with lawmakers at a recent live taping of the Political Climate podcast, which Latitude Media co-produces. “It is actually very simple to think about how to do this,” Powell said. “You identify the people that would be the natural champions for advocating for these projects, you develop a relationship with those people, and you talk to them about how very, very, very important this policy is for them.”
Fleming described a similar, long-running relationship with the Department of Energy. He argued that Montana Renewables had the added advantage of beginning their loan application process three years ago, before the post-election rush. They received a conditional loan in October 2024, which was then finalized in January before Trump took office.
“We didn’t get a grant. We didn’t get a gift. We didn’t get an earmark,” he said. “We were given a loan by a professional underwriting firm who said, ‘Yeah, we think this will work and we think these guys will pay us back. It’s not a small undertaking and it took three years to go through the whole process.’”
So while Trump’s DOE may have slightly different priorities than Biden’s did, Fleming emphasized that domestic energy security and technical innovation remain paramount.
“We lay right into that,” Fleming added. “This is not the Green New Deal. The DOE doesn’t need that. They need to see that [an applicant] has a line of sight on domestic energy security and innovation.” (The Loan Programs Office declined to respond to questions for this story.)
Montana Renewables’ facility is currently in a club of one, but certain loan recipients remain confident about their chances of also getting their funds unfrozen soon — even as others, including Aspen Aerogels, withdraw from consideration. Another SAF company Gevo, for instance, also received a conditional commitment for $1.46 billion in October, though it wasn’t finalized before Biden left office. The company told Latitude Media that it’s unconcerned, though, and is looking forward to working with the Trump administration to close the loan.
