WASHINGTON: US 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 US$2.8bil (RM12.7bil) 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.

       There are plenty of reasons the agency isn’t doling out billions of taxpayer dollars to private companies in hasty fashion. For one, political scrutiny has intensified, with Republicans accusing the Energy Department of funding technology that benefits China.

       The trouble is, decoupling is a relatively new phenomenon in Washington. Not long ago, American entrepreneurs seeking fortunes in China – at a time when the United States lacked a meaningful electric vehicle (EV) market – would have been encouraged. Now, it’s cause for concern.

       Many grant requirements guard against risks the agency’s critics are concerned about, including restrictions on hiring of foreign nationals, provisions to buy American supplies and equipment where possible, and stipulations on cybersecurity to guard against intellectual property theft.

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       But that same criteria is making it difficult for the department to stay on schedule, which speaks to the scale of the challenges the agency is trying to take on.

       “The US government hasn’t given out this level of taxpayer money since World War II,” said Todd Malan, head of external affairs at Talon Metals Corp, which is waiting on about US$115mil (RM520mil) to help fund a nickel-processing plant in North Dakota. “It makes sense they’re cutting their teeth first so they can go faster in the future.”

       At least one project on the Energy Department’s list seems to have been eliminated over a company’s China exposure. In May, the agency nixed a US$200mil (RM905mil) grant that would have helped Microvast Holdings Inc build a battery separator plant in Kentucky with General Motors.

       The Texas-based firm, which raised more than US$800mil (RM3.6bil) by merging with a blank-cheque company in 2021, said the Energy Department’s decision will delay but not deter efforts to bring its separator technology to market.

       “I’m disappointed we didn’t receive the grant,” chief executive officer Yang Wu, a Chinese-born American citizen, said in a statement last month. — Bloomberg