Energy Dept. Weighs Using Clean Tech Funds to Back a Fossil Fuels Project. Will Congress Stop It?

Inside Climate News: Democrats are mounting a challenge on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives against what they call a raid by the natural gas and plastics industries on a pot of federal money created to help finance innovations that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The fight is over a proposed $1.9 billion government-backed loan guarantee from a program that has primarily been used to back wind power, solar and other types of clean energy. The Energy Department is now considering using that program to support a large-scale underground storage project for ethane, a fossil fuel byproduct used to make plastics.

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