Biorefinery and biobased manufacturing loan guarantee
Loan guarantees of up to $250 million for commercial-scale US facilities using new technology to produce advanced biofuels, renewable chemicals or biobased products.
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The Section 9003 programme can guarantee a commercial loan for developing, building or retrofitting a commercial-scale biorefinery that uses eligible technology. It can also support technologically new commercial-scale equipment that turns renewable chemicals or other biorefinery outputs into end-user biobased products. Refinancing can qualify in limited circumstances.
The guarantee is capped at $250 million. The lender and borrower negotiate the interest rate and loan terms under USDA rules. The guarantee and any other federal funding together cannot exceed 80% of eligible project costs. The borrower and anyone else USDA classifies as a project principal must put a significant cash contribution into the project as equity, not as another loan.
Eligibility
A bank or other lender—not the project company—submits the guarantee application. The lender must have experience with similar projects and meet the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's Well Capitalized thresholds when it applies and when USDA issues the guarantee. The lender can check this status in its regulatory Call Report or Thrift Financial Report; if the status is not shown there, it must calculate its capital levels and provide them to USDA.
The full lender-type list in current 7 CFR covers federal or state-chartered banks, Farm Credit Banks and other Farm Credit System institutions with direct lending authority, Banks for Cooperatives, supervised credit unions and the National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corporation. A lender must be both on this list and meet USDA's other requirements.
The lender may request a guarantee for a borrower that is an individual, entity, state or local government, corporation, tribe, farm cooperative, agricultural-producer association, national laboratory, higher-education institution, rural electric cooperative, public-power entity or consortium of these groups. The project must be in one of the 50 states or another territory covered by the programme's regulatory definition of a State.
Your project must be either a commercial-scale biorefinery using eligible technology or a qualifying biobased-product manufacturing facility using technologically new commercial-scale equipment. Costs for equipment or processes that turn corn kernel starch into biofuel are excluded, including when biofuel is only an incidental or secondary product.
A borrower can also be ineligible because of specified outstanding US federal judgments, delinquent federal income taxes or federal debt, or debarment or suspension from federal assistance. These tests also apply to owners above the regulation's ownership thresholds.
How to apply
- Status
- lukker 1. okt. 2026
- Lukker
- Vilkår for ansøgningsrunden
- The letter-of-intent deadline for this cycle was September 1, 2026.
- The Phase 1 application deadline is October 1, 2026.
Contact USDA Rural Development at EnergyPrograms@rd.usda.gov before completing the forms, and complete registration in the System for Award Management (SAM). The lender or borrower first submits a non-binding letter of intent at least 30 calendar days before the relevant application deadline.
The lender then submits the first-stage application, called Phase 1. USDA uses it to assess lender, borrower and project eligibility, initial economic and technical feasibility, and the application's priority score. Only higher-ranked applicants are invited to the second stage, Phase 2, which requires an environmental report, technical report, financial model and the lender's credit evaluation.