The White House has announced a broad set of executive actions to further the deployment of clean energy that directly benefits state Green Banks. President Obama is using all the tools at his disposable within the federal government to support the financing and adoption of clean energy at the state and local level. This week’s announcement includes new guidance from the Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office that it will now offer loans and loan guarantees in partnership with state Green Banks to finance clean energy projects. This exciting announcement is the result of CGC’s focused engagement with the LPO, as well as the multi-state Green Bank meeting at the White House earlier this summer that CGC helped facilitate. The LPO announcement also included a new $1 billion loan guarantee fund to support distributed energy project portfolios. Previously, the LPO program was primarily designed to support construction of single, large scale projects. CGC worked with the White House and the LPO to illuminate the need to expand support the portfolios of smaller projects, which can be difficult to finance through private investors. In combination, the two elements of this guidance meet that any state Green Bank can now access low-cost capital from the federal government to finance large portfolios of clean energy projects, including solar-plus-battery-storage, micro-grids, and innovative efficiency installations.
For further details on the announcement, read the White House Fact Sheet. And for a deeper dive on the new distributed energy component of the LPO program, check out this article from Greentech Media.