The Trump administration has moved to cancel almost $30 billion (£24 billion) of clean energy financing approved under Joe Biden, ripping up deals from the US Energy Department’s powerful loans programme.

The department said it will also revise a further $53 billion (£42 billion) of funding and has already eliminated $9.5 billion (£7.6 billion) of support for wind and solar projects, with the money set to be redirected into natural gas and nuclear.

The shake-up follows a review of transactions signed off in the final months of the Biden presidency and marks a sharp pivot away from clean power towards fossil fuels and atomic energy.

The Energy Department said its Loan Programs Office, now rebranded as the Office of Energy Dominance Financing, had rushed out too much money too late.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright said: “We found more dollars were rushed out the door of the Loan Programs Office in the final months of the Biden Administration than had been disbursed in over 15 years.”

Under Biden, the loans office ballooned into a $400 billion (£320 billion) green bank after being turbocharged by the Inflation Reduction Act, backing everything from Tesla’s Model S to the first new US nuclear reactors in decades.

The programme had more than $289 billion (£231 billion) of loan authority still on its books when Trump returned to office.

While Trump once argued the government had no business “picking winners and losers”, his administration is now planning to use the same pot of money to bankroll nuclear reactors geothermal power and critical minerals.

The Energy Department has not yet disclosed which specific deals have been scrapped or rewritten, setting up a fresh clash over the future of US clean energy finance.