The Energy Department closed a $5.1 billion loan package for Alliant Energy on Wednesday, the Trump administration's tenth financial close through its Energy Dominance Financing program. The package is two 30-year loans reported in Alliant's SEC filing: about $3.5 billion to Interstate Power and Light, its Iowa utility, and about $1.6 billion to Wisconsin Power & Light. The interest rate on each loan aligns with the government's own borrowing costs plus a fixed markup, and Alliant is responsible for interest only until the first principal payments fall due in 2052.
The money is pointed at firm power. Alliant plans 1.6 gigawatts of new natural gas generation, 240 megawatts of added capacity at existing gas plants, 1 gigawatt of battery storage and 2 billion cubic feet of added liquefied natural gas storage — more than 2.6 gigawatts in all, which the department says is enough electricity for nearly 2 million homes. "The Energy Department is delivering on President Trump's promise to lower electricity costs," Energy Secretary Chris Wright said, and the department puts the bill savings for families and businesses in the two states at more than $1 billion. Alliant's chief executive, Lisa Barton, said the federally backed financing lowers the cost of building the infrastructure its customers depend on, and the company projects savings of up to $1.2 billion over the life of the loans, alongside more than 1,600 construction jobs — the department's own announcement says hundreds.
The deal has a history that shows the change of administration. It began in January 2025 as a Biden-era conditional commitment of $3 billion for clean energy and battery storage projects. The package that closed this week is $2.1 billion larger and now includes natural gas generation, without the climate conditions the earlier version carried — battery storage is in both versions. Critics state their case straight: Tom Opdyke of the R Street Institute calls it another example of the department "distorting the power generation market," and Reason argues the below-market federal credit works as a subsidy that enriches Alliant and disadvantages its competitors at taxpayers' expense, doing a job that should be left to private lenders. The close also landed less than a week before the midterm elections in two competitive states, a timing critics noted, though an Alliant spokesperson said the company spent months finalising contracts before the package was completed this week.
For citizens in Iowa and Wisconsin, the honest version of the promise is a slow one. The savings the department and Alliant claim — more than $1 billion, and up to $1.2 billion over the loans' lifetime on the company's projection — are spread across about 1.5 million customers over 30 years, and wire coverage cautions that any cut in electricity costs could take many years to show up, because the loans run for decades. What arrives sooner is the build itself: gas plants that can run on demand, a gigawatt of batteries to store power for peak hours, and the construction work that comes with them — paid for with federal credit whose cost and risk sit with taxpayers if the projects underperform.
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