“We want to attract some of the best and brightest companies from around the world to invest here in the United States,” Shah said.
"America wants to attract foreign direct investment," Jigar Shah, the director of the Department of Energy's loan program office, said during POLITICO’s Energy Summit in D.C.
“America wants to attract foreign direct investment,” Jigar Shah, the director of the Department of Energy’s loan program office, said during POLITICO’s Energy Summit in D.C. “We want to attract some of the best and brightest companies from around the world to invest here in the United States and create jobs here in the United States. So I think we can do both attracting foreign direct investment and avoiding folks who have track records that are ones that we want to stay away from.
Shah said the department examines loan recipients on a “person-by-person basis” and conducts background checks to “make sure that nobody who has direct ties to authoritarian regimes ... are allowed in the program.” “Background checks are done on a person-by-person, investor-by-investor basis,” Shah said. “They all have track records and investments they’ve made in Germany, or Italy or [other] places. We keep notes and all the things that they do, and so you just put them through the database and see what they’ve done. I think it’s just a disciplined approach to making sure that we’re attracting the best and the brightest here.
An official overseeing the Biden admin's portfolio of clean-energy loans defended DOE's goal of attracting foreign direct investments today, even as lawmakers battle over whether any money should go to companies that do business with China. “We want to attract some of the best…