EPA announces awards for $20 billion ‘green bank’

Today the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the recipients of its $20 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF). 

The three nonprofit coalitions of green banks and community lenders receiving — and evenly sharing — $14 billion from the GGRF’s National Clean Investment Fund are Power Forward, Climate United, and the Coalition for Green Capital. The remaining $6 billion will be divided between five nonprofit community hubs from the Clean Communities Investment Accelerator, helping lenders in underserved communities expand into green lending.

The NCIF is a national clean financing institution that works in tandem with the private sector to stimulate the clean energy marketplace. To receive NCIF cash, the three recipients had to demonstrate how they planned to mobilize private capital in addition to ensure additional deployment of clean energy technologies.

Power Forward received $2 billion and will focus on electrification in housing. Climate United — receiving the largest amount of funds at $10 billion — will focus on the environmental and economic opportunity of low-income disadvantaged communities. The Coalition for Green Capital will represent state and local green banks and will get $5 billion to capitalize green banks and qualified projects.

Power Forward, Climate United and the Coalition for Green Capital submitted initial proposals in the fall, with the EPA signaling that awardees would be announced in March.

Companies have been preparing for today’s announcement. CNote, an impact cash management platform for corporations, announced the launch of Climate Cash. The product allows corporations to deposit cash into a network of FDIC/NCUS depositories that support carbon reduction and green lending in underserved communities.

“Deposits that use the Climate Cash solution help fund clean energy projects,” said Cat Berman, CEO and co-founder of CNote, to GreenBiz in an email, “Our technology makes it easy for investors to drive positive, sustainable change with fully FDIC-insured deposits.”

Businesses, governments and community lenders are all eligible to apply to one of the three recipients for funding, so long as they fall within one of the three priority project categories: Distributed energy generation and storage, net-zero emissions buildings, and zero-emissions transportation.