Washington, DC – The Coalition for Green Capital (CGC) invites clean energy businesses and community lenders to submit concept papers proposing partnering with a national green bank network. CGC requests concept papers focused on investment opportunities in clean energy projects reducing greenhouse gases and benefitting low-income and disadvantaged communities in line with the goals of the EPA’s $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF). CGC has announced strategic partnerships with 18 partners including green banks and clean energy lenders and investors to support the creation of a national green bank network.
CGC intends to compete for some portion of the $14 billion of GGRF program funds that the EPA will award under a National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF) competition to 2 to 3 national nonprofits. These nonprofits will partner with private capital providers to deliver financing at scale to businesses, communities, community lenders, and others to catalyze the deployment of clean energy projects and accelerate the nation’s progress towards energy independence and a net-zero economic future. NCIF competition grant funds, if awarded to CGC, will be used to act as a national green bank that can provide a wide range of financial products (e.g., loans, loan guarantees, credit enhancements, insurance/reinsurance, purchase of loans, subordinated capital, equity investments) to finance qualified projects directly or indirectly.
CEO and Founder of CGC, Reed Hundt said, “The American Green Bank Consortium last year accounted for $5 billion in additional public/private investments. We now have green banks, including CDFIs and affiliated CDCUs and start-ups at early stages of development, in 40 states. We can match up projects everywhere in the country with existing nonprofit clean energy financing. We are issuing this RFI to expand on our work of making clean energy markets work better, faster, and bigger in every state and every low-income and disadvantaged community. We encourage every business, trade association, and private investor in the country to reply confidentially to our RFI with a concept paper helping us achieve our goals.”
Eli Hopson, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director at CGC said, “We’re excited to begin the work of deploying these dollars in your clean energy projects as quickly as possible, and want to hear from you about your financing challenges and opportunities that a national green bank network can address. When starting up the DC Green Bank, I reached out to the private sector to understand the needs of the clean energy sector, and several other green banks in the consortium began their deployments in the same way, leading to $15 billion in total public-private investment caused since 2011.”
The GGRF program was authorized and funded under the Inflation Reduction Act to accelerate investments in clean energy with a focus on low-income and disadvantaged communities. The NCIF competition under the GGRF program creates the opportunity for a national green bank network to deploy billions of dollars in investments in projects as well as investments made through community lenders (e.g., public, quasi-public, not-for-profit, and nonprofit entities that provide financing for qualified projects at the state, local, and community levels). These will finance GGRF-qualified projects, including distributed energy projects that generate and/or store zero-emissions energy near the point of use, retrofitting existing buildings to reduce or eliminate air pollution emissions, supporting zero-emission transportation modes, especially in communities overburdened with air pollution, and enabling the decarbonization of energy systems.
Concept papers are due July 7, 2023.
View the RFI here.