More good news for ethanol. U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has announced up to $30 billion in new load guarantees funded in part, through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and in part through 2009 appropriations. Once again, next generation biofuels projects get an additional boost as the lending authority includes up to $500 million in subsidy costs to support loans for these groups. These dollars are coming specifically from the Recovery Act.

Just last week, the DOE announced $85 million for Algal and Advanced Biofuels, the funding also coming from the Recovery Act.

As reported first by Biofuels Digest, the solicitation is the seventh rounds of solicitations by the Department’s Loan Guarantee Program, which encourages the commercial use of new or improved energy technologies to help foster clean energy projects. Applications will be accepted over the next 45 days.

If it is at all possible to speed up the federal government, the DOE has said that is has created a streamlined process to accelerate the loans. In addition, they are absorbing up to $3 billion in loan guarantee administration costs that were originally charged back to former loan recipients. The DOE will announce more details regarding the load guarantee solicitations funded by the Recovery Act soon.