The US Department of Energy (DOE) has pulled out of a commitment to help fund the Grain Belt Express Phase I project through a loan guarantee of up to $4.9 billion.

The 5GW Grain Belt is a proposed high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission line intended to connect wind and solar capacity across Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois.

Renewable developer Invenergy has claimed that its transmission line could support up to 50 data centers.

The move puts the $11bn, 800-mile project at risk. The Grain Belt was set to become the largest privately funded transmission line in US history. Invenergy claims that it will provide $52bn in energy cost savings over 15 years and support 5,500 jobs.

The project, a decade in the making, has faced pushback from landowners and Republican politicians.

Invenergy said that the loss of funding was disappointing, but said that the "transmission superhighway will advance President Trump’s agenda of American energy and technology dominance."

Jigar Shah, the director of the DOE Loan Programs Office under Biden, called the move "illegal." He added: "When the Loan Programs Office (LPO) applicant meets all of the requirements that are set for the conditional commitment, then the Department of Energy is obligated to close the loan.

"Separately, transmission is a stated priority of the administration. Watch what they do, not what they say."

Thousands of DOE employees were laid off earlier this year, including from the loans office.

The current DOE said that it "found that the conditions necessary to issue the guarantee are unlikely to be met and it is not critical for the federal government to have a role in supporting this project."

The move to cancel support for the Grain Belt Express comes in the same week that President Trump signed an executive order removing clean energy stipulations from the data center proposal, and instructed agencies to streamline environmental reviews and permitting for data centers and related infrastructure, alongside releasing a broader AI Action Plan.

The DOE also announced four sites where data centers could be built on Federal land.