Shows $1.69 billion total investment in clean energy and energy-efficient projects in 2020 alone
5 new green banks join Consortium as efforts to develop more green banks amass across 22 states
WASHINGTON—The Coalition for Green Capital and all twenty-one members of the American Green Bank Consortium released today their annual Green Bank Industry Report for the 2020 calendar year.
“Green banks drove a record amount of clean energy investment in 2020, mobilizing $1.69 billion of total investment with $442 million of green bank funds; in total, this brings cumulative green bank investment to $7 billion using $1.9 billion green bank funds,” the report found.
In 2020, the American Green Bank Consortium counted five new green banks as members and noted that government officials, local leaders, and market actors across 22 states were actively exploring or taking steps to develop green banks.
“Green banks have proven over the course of the last decade that they create jobs, serve disadvantaged communities, and combat the climate crisis,” said American Green Bank Consortium Director Alex Kragie. “Every public dollar is an important investment on these fronts, and green banks get substantial bang for the buck by unlocking multiples of every public dollar in private investment.”
“As Congress considers infrastructure legislation this summer, green banks in the U.S. are making a clear case for the inclusion of a federal Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator that can bring green bank impact to scale across the country,” said Coalition for Green Capital Executive Director Jeffrey Schub. “A national green bank is a major part of the solution our country needs to achieve a just-and-true clean energy transition. ”
The report also stressed the value of federal green bank proposals put forth by Sens. Markey (D-Mass.) and Van Hollen (D-Md.) in the National Climate Bank Act (S. 283) and by Rep. Dingell (D-Mich.) in the Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator Act (H.R. 806). Coalition for Green Capital CEO Reed Hundt last month testified before the Senate Environment & Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate and Nuclear Safety in support of S. 283.
“This report only confirms that we need to accelerate the deployment of clean energy infrastructure by establishing a federal green bank,” Hundt said. “This bill is a win for American small businesses, low- to moderate-income families, and millions of people looking for good-paying jobs in cities and towns across the nation.”
Both S. 283 and H.R. 806 bills would provide an initial capitalization of $100 billion to leverage the tried-and-tested green bank model to deploy clean energy infrastructure and create an estimated 4 million jobs in just 4 years. The Coalition for Green Capital has identified over 100 different types of jobs (Standard Occupation Classifications as published by OMB) that Accelerator investment would support.
President Biden in March announced the Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator as a key climate provision in the American Jobs Plan, citing the capacity of a non-profit federal green bank to invest with “a particular focus on disadvantaged communities that have not yet benefited from clean energy investments.”
Read the full report here.