September 17, 2025 • 37 mins
Networks of financial institutions are pushing ahead with the green evolution of energy despite federal dollars in flux, as $20 billion from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund is locked in a legal battle.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Straw Hut Media.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
The clean energy transition is happening, but who is benefiting
from that transition is unequal.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
This is Lucas Quindley from Next City, a show about
change makers and their stories. Truth is, there are solutions
to the problems of pressing people and cities. If you're listening,
I hope it's because you want to spread good ideas
from one city to the next city. If you're rooting
for the transition into clean energy, and I hope you are,
then you were frustrated, to say the least, when the
Trump administration tried to cut roughly twenty million dollars of
(00:40):
the greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund that was meant to accelerate
our evolution. Today that money sits frozen in legal limbo,
but rest assured that on the ground, local lenders are
not just waiting around. Today you'll hear from three leaders
who are persisting on advances in clean energy. Netda Arab
Shahi from Inclusive Center for Resilient and Clean Energy, which
(01:01):
helps hundreds of credit unions finance solar evs and resiliency upgrades.
Amir Kirkwood, CEO of the Climate Justice Fund, which mobilizes
a national network of Community Lenders and Beth Bafford of
Climate United, a consortium led by Calvert Impact along with
CPC and Self Help to create a green planet. First,
(01:22):
we need to understand the financing plumbing that lets investment
flow into new innovation. We're going to learn how neighborhoods
turn one public dollar into many, even if the big
pot remains out of reach. Leading the conversation is Next
City's senior Economic Justice correspondent Oscar Periabella.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
You know the Green Assctast Reduction Fund.
Speaker 5 (01:45):
Obviously, it isn't the only climate investment program that the
federal government has full force over the past several years
or decades.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
You know, there's solar.
Speaker 5 (01:55):
Tax credits, all kinds of other programs, but this one
in particular at the greens Gas Production Fund. It was
a twenty billion dollar program created by the Inflationial Reduction Act.
And we're not going to talk so much about the
legal battle over those twenty billion dollars. The front of
administration has been trying to claw it back almost since
before it was even in office, and there they're been
(02:19):
lawsuits filed they try to get those funds released. Those
funds are technically sitting in a bank account right now
at City, and almost all of them have basically been
frozen and they're not moving out into these projects or
into the programs that we're going to talk about today.
That said, I know just from my own reporting following
(02:41):
around some of the groups that I've talked to over
the past few years, you know, small credit unions, community banks, CDFI,
loan funds, other capital providers, and I know that there's
been so much work put in even just to prepare
to get those twenty billion dollars out entered the ground
(03:03):
into projects through various lenders and institutions all over the country.
And so that's where we're going to start talking about today.
We're going to learn a little bit about why it's
important to support these these locally owned, locally controlled financial
institutions to put out not just the twenty billion dollars,
(03:24):
but also that all of the private dollars that we're
going to be leveraged alongside that. You know, the number
I've seen most often is one to five. So for
every dollar from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, there's going
to be around an average of five dollars and private
sector funds leverage alongside those dollars. So we're going to
talk a little bit about how that works and what
(03:46):
is still possible today. Or coming from three of the
Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, Finance and entuitees. They're all coming
from different networks that have come together over the past
few years.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
A mere the CEO of.
Speaker 5 (04:01):
The Justice Climate Fund, you know, tell us tell me
a lot about Justice Climate Funds and some of the
kinds of loans or projects programs that the institutions in
those networks are building.
Speaker 6 (04:14):
Justice Climate Fund, as you mentioned, was really born of
an effort by a series of networks of community development
finance organizations with the real intent of ensuring that the
efforts around community development finance were as inclusive as possible
of as many diverse developers, diverse CDFIs, but already depository institutions,
(04:41):
credit unions, as many bringing that world together in a
way to sure that capital really was equitable. When the
opportunity came along under the Greenhouse Gash Reduction Fund in
the IRA for that group to apply for funding to
bring clean energy finance two communities, they formed what was
(05:02):
called the Justice was now called the Justice Climate Fund
and the Justice Climate Funds real intent was to win
funding under the Greenoss Gastroduction Fund in order to deploy
capital through those networks of community lenders. If you think
about the split of the type of projects, some of
it was multi family energy efficiency retrofits, there was residential solar,
(05:26):
commercial real estate transactions, and particularly a lot of commercial
real estate that was tied to community facilities, healthcare, education,
all of those groups. So the impact was going to
be broad in terms of what we were all collectively
hoping to utilize that capital for going forward. I think
(05:48):
we found that still a strong demand at the community
level for financing for clean energy projects. After things started
to go sideway with the federal government, we stepped back
at just Climb fund and said, if there's no GJRF,
what does it look like to have community based clean
energy lending? And what we found was that among that
(06:11):
network there was still close to a billion dollars of
deal pipeline that needed some degree of concessionary financing, but
weren't in need of the deep subsidy or significant amounts
of technical assistance to get there. So what we've been
focusing our energy on is how do we get that
gap net through non traditional financing sources. Or traditional financing sources.
Speaker 5 (06:37):
That's great, And I know if I could actually to
talk a little bit about what it is about the
network of institutions that, you know, knowing the contractors bringing
in those minority of women owned contractor firms.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
To do some of this work.
Speaker 5 (06:56):
What is it about these institutions that makes them particularly
suited or able to to bring in those contractors versus
just any old bank.
Speaker 6 (07:04):
You know. Prior to this, I was the CEO of
Locusts Community Bank based out of Richmond, Virginia, and during
the time I was there, I saw the solar platform
grow from about ten million dollars in loans to about
fifty million, so roughly about ten percent of the overall
book by the time I left. And the reason that
that happened is that CDFI's minority depository institutions. They all
(07:27):
just figure out how to leverage all the resources, is
the best way I put it. So a deal may
go to market and it adds a little bit of
state tax credits, it may have some federal tax credits.
It probably figured out how to get a grant, and
obviously it's using the deposit base of that institution in
order to get it done. Step two is the closeness
usually of all the actors in the institution to the
(07:50):
decision making. And then the third thing, to me is
just the obvious issue of the if not, then who's
going to do it? Element of it that comes from
being ammunity lender. While we partner at all, CDFIs partner
with institutional money. Often that institutional money can't make the loans,
can't get to the economics to make a transaction makes
(08:13):
sense at a community level, and that's where the CDFIs,
the community development, credit unions, the others in this network
all come in because we can bridge between what institutional
money cannot do and what the community needs.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Even without the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund or GGRF, clearly
there remains a network that's ready to act on clean
energy and there are efforts to grow that network and
its capacity that have not stopped either.
Speaker 7 (08:44):
I am Netta Erbshahi, I head Inclusive Center for Resiliency
and Clean Energy. Inclusive is a fifty year old nonprofit organization.
We have the mission to help low and moderate income
people and communities achieve financial independence through credit unions. So
through both the programmatic work and the investment activities. We
(09:06):
support a network of over five hundred credit unions across
the country, and we launched our Center for Resilience and
Clean Energy to help provide community lenders with the training
and the technical assistance needed to bring affordable, accessible, clean
energy and energy efficiency financing to their communities. The joint
(09:26):
program with Center for Impact Finance at University of New Hampshire,
together with Inclusive, we have trained over one thousand lending
professionals from six one hundred and fifty we're probably closer
to seven hundred community lending institutions. So we have seen
most of those launch clean energy lending programs, or if
(09:49):
they already had a program, they may have grown it
or found ways to make sure that they can keep
it alive because sometimes, you know, markets change and possibilities change,
and we've help them to navigate those changes. Those lenders
have really started to kind of build local markets that
(10:10):
then create a positive feedback loop for many other players
have entered those markets.
Speaker 5 (10:15):
Yeah, and the seven hundred lenders that you mentioned that
you've helped train the institutions, can you give us events
of or you know they're all in urban areas, are
they also in smaller cities, even rural areas.
Speaker 7 (10:29):
They are located in a combination of rural and urban
and suburban areas. They're really all over the country, and
their reach is they lend collectively. They lend in all
fifty states. They also land in Puerto Rico and the
US Virgin Islands, and also actually in Guam. Typically, what's
(10:51):
common across all those lenders is that they really understand
their own community, and so we've designed support that guides
and how to create a program that uses their own
expertise about their community to offer loan products and also
kind of other support and accessing clean energy. You know
(11:12):
how to connect with the right contractors or developers or
installers for example. But it's really using their own expertise
to tie into and serve their communities.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
The federal government does not have a monopoly on change,
and that's why I say, as often as I can,
progress is not lost its local. After the break, Climate
United's Beth Bafford explains how they're pushing more clean energy
dollars into communities. Welcome back. Before the break, we heard
(11:49):
how inclusives, credit unions, and the Justice Climate Funds Network
are moving projects now even with GGRF dollars on ice.
Now we zoom out to the national plumbing that helps
those unders go further with best baffort of Climate United.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
So Climate United is looking at how to support economic
development and opportunity for underresourced communities. It's a partnership of
three national nonprofit organizations, Calvert Impact and Climate United is
a subsidiary of Calvert Impact, Community Preservation Corporation, which focuses
(12:27):
on multi family affordable housing and Self Help Ventures Fund,
which is a family of organizations two credit unions, a
loan fund, and an adovacy policy organization under the Self
Help brand. And we really came together to create a
we call it a multi segment strategy that could look
(12:49):
at the focus areas of the program and meet the
deeds at all different for all different types of people
and communities. You know, going into the network that we built,
which was you know, in some ways overlapping and intersecting
with net and Ameror's networks. Is really looking at the
institutions that at the end of the day have a
(13:10):
mandate to invest in lend into projects that support either
economic development or affordability. There's not as clear of a
line as folks tend to think of between community and
economic development and clean energy and clean technologies, it's the same,
it's you know, different ways to get to the same
ends in terms of job creation, manufacturing, business growth, and
(13:34):
affordability across the spectrum. And I think we're seeing that
even more acutely today than when the Greenhouse Gas Reduction
Fund was passed, in terms of the importance of looking
at energy affordability and energy access and reliability with a
very stressed grid, and when people have when business owners,
(13:54):
when communities, when schools, when nonprofits have problems like this
projects to get done, they go to their local lender
to get them done. They're the local problem solvers that
can figure out how to get from point A to
point B to bring those benefits locally. And unfortunately, the
rest of our financial system has structural challenges that no
(14:16):
longer allow them to play that local problem solving role,
which has created an even greater need for these institutions
on the ground.
Speaker 5 (14:29):
So Netta and Emir are or working on programs that
will sort of invest kind of directly into.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
The institutions themselves.
Speaker 5 (14:38):
With Climate United, the plan is a little bit different,
and it's structured to do something else. It's more about
the secondary market vehicles or loan purchasing loan participations.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
Can you talk a.
Speaker 5 (14:50):
Little bit about that and how that supports the network
of lenders that some of them are actually going to
be grantees inclusive from netto from a mere grant. You know,
they'll investments grantees. Those grantees will be able to do
more work and you'll be able to come in and
support them.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
How can you talk about the how?
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Yeah? Absolutely, So. There are two different programs that our
organizations were awarded funds through. So Amir and Netta were
awarded funds through the Cleaning Communities Investment Accelerator. That program
was specifically set up to provide essentially capitalization grants equity
grants to lending institutions in order for them to be
(15:33):
able to finance projects in their backyard. The program that
we were awarded through is called the National Clean Investment
Fund Program, and that program was set up essentially as
national green financing infrastructure meant to support the various needs
of projects, developers, operators and lenders in the ecosystem because,
(15:56):
as we all know who've been working in this space
for a long time, not bidding needs the same thing
at the same time.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
And then the.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Barriers to growth or the barriers to get projects done
differ depending on the different context of the project or
the work or the place, and so it was really
meant to be a compliment to provide equity support to
balance sheets in order for folks to either develop or
grow their green lending, their clean technology lending programs, but
(16:25):
also then be able to access various financial tools to
continue or expand that growth. And so for us that
was in three flavors. We were doing some direct kind
of highly structured deals where the brain damage was high
enough that other financial institutions were not willing to do it,
but we thought there was a really clear market transformation
(16:49):
or kind of market expansion argument too. We were investing
directly into lenders who could then use that liquidity to
do more projects, so basically leveraging some of the equity
they were getting through the Clean Community's Investment Accelerator program
to provide liquidity to do more deals. And then third
(17:10):
was to bus purchase standardized products. So look at where
there were markets that were more ready for standardization that
could start to leverage the secondary markets for kind of
better price liquidity and access the secondary markets in order
to further expand for anything that could be standardized and sold,
(17:30):
So looking at that for green mortgages, single family mortgages,
and multi family mortgages, looking at the space market, the
commercial property assessed clean energy market, and building out the
secondary market there, which Calvert and Past has experience in
really looking at where where there are markets that are
at that maturity level that we could help scale while
(17:51):
continuing to build the patterns and recognition to eventually get
to a secondary market for some of the non standard
assets that a lot of community lenders are active in doing.
And so it's really set up to be multiple tools
in the toolkit depending on what was needed in the
market at that time. And I think that's one of
(18:13):
the things that people don't really kind of hasn't fully
set in. It's just the importance from a policy perspective
of this kind of institution in the market supporting clean
energy adoption, because you know, at the end of the day,
the program was built with the recognition that the clean
energy transition is happening, but who was benefiting from that
(18:36):
transition is unequal, and I think that is the purpose
of this program to take the tax credits to take
the incentives to take all these other amazing things that
were in the IRA that are now getting wound down,
but to ensure they are being adopted with people, places,
communities across the country that otherwise we're going to be
(18:57):
kind of in the back of the line in terms
of clean energy option and really should be at the front.
Speaker 7 (19:01):
And so.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
That takes flexibility, It takes being a part of the market.
It takes being reactive to the market in order to
make sure that we're solving the right problem at the
right time to get us to that long term goal.
And most government programs aren't set up like that. Most
are much more prescriptive. And so that flexibility dump in
was was really a critical part of the design.
Speaker 5 (19:29):
In a way what you were building in terms of
the secondary market pieces or it's sort of like the
Fanny may or the Freddie mac or this kind of work.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
That that rights in terms like you know.
Speaker 5 (19:40):
Today we can look and say Brandy Man and Freddie
Mack are responsible for a majority of residential lending that
happens in any given year today that happens that happens
through private lenders. We then sell the loans to Fanny
may or Freddiemac and so you were looking for lenders
like the ones in your network. You know, some of
(20:00):
them are the same ones that neta end And I
mean you're building, you're working Beneth to make the loans,
and then you were going to purchase some of those
loans in the same way that Fan you or Freddie
would Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
I think I think in a lot of ways, it
was learning, learning from Fanny and Freddie what's worked and
what hasn't worked in that structure, to understand how we
address and serve the markets that we were trying to serve.
I think there are some things that were relevant and translatable,
some things where standardization is not always the answer and possible,
(20:37):
and so thinking about different structures where we could kind
of see what's worked in those markets, what hasn't where
people have gotten left behind, and figure out how to
address those markets again and kind of in the right
way with the right tools, but certainly meant to provide
kind of national infrastructure in a way that is similar
(21:01):
to the purpose of those entities.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
After the break, what funding is moving now, how to
reach a community lender where you live, and real projects
like affordable housing upgrades and resilient tubs advancing while federal
dollars are frozen. Welcome back. So far we've heard how
(21:25):
local lenders, credit union, CDFIs and community banks built real
capacity to finance clean energy, and how a national secondary
market can help them stretch those dollars. Even though the
Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund is frozen, there is still funding
available for projects. Here's a mere Kirkwood of Justice Climate Fund.
Speaker 6 (21:47):
Remember what GGRF was doing was providing subsidy fundamentally for deals.
It was not the driver, the sole driver of the
pipeline itself. So all of the lenders in our network
are still trying to identify ways to finance deals. They're
open for business, their banks and their loan funds. They
have to make loans, so they weren't allowed to fall
(22:09):
apart because the federal government decided to move away from
a policy. If this is being asked by a specific developer,
I would suggest you get in touch with either the
Inclusive Network. You can get in touch with Justice Climate Fund.
You can get touch with any of the networks that
are underneath the Justice Climate Fund, and they can help
(22:30):
you identify a bank that is in your relevant market
that might be able to provide financing. You know, you
still want to take advantage of the fact that they
are all local lenders. So if you're sitting in you know, Savannah,
Georgia right now, you want to be working with either
you know, one of the local green banks, local credit unions,
(22:51):
or local cdfives to that market.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (22:54):
Anything to add yeah, absolutely, So a little bit of
like stats on where our network is with this. With
our CCIA program, as Beth mentioned, we were building grant
pipeline and we saw that there were close to three
hundred credit unions that informed us they were ready to
(23:18):
apply for those grants, ready to start deploying their own
existing deposit capital which they were required to lend to projects.
And so those nearly three hundred credit unions are across
forty two states and three territories. They have two hundred
and fifty five billion dollars in assets, and they directly
(23:38):
provide financial services to sixteen million residents, you know, across
all those states and territories. And for the CCIA application
that they made to US for grants, they had committed
collectively nearly one point two billion dollars of their own
(24:02):
institutional capital to finance clean energy projects. But there are
definitely lenders across that network that continue to finance projects,
and they are many of them are trying to figure
out how they can support as many projects as possible
between now and the end of the year so as
to take advantage of any remaining incentives that will run
(24:25):
out at the end of the year.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
And asker, I know we're not going into kind of
detail on the lawsuit, but just for folks awareness, right,
I mean, I think we are not giving up on
access to the funds that are sitting in our bank accounts.
That is a process that is that is still underway.
And so just want everybody to be crystal clear that
as we think about the path forward and pushing forward,
(24:50):
we are all trying to creatively think about how to
make forward progress while also continuing to push to get
access to the funds that are legally are.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
And maybe we can talk about affordable housing builders for
whole housing looking for a flexible, blown market financing to
implement sustainability measures, how are you planning to provide support
that allows for blow market financing of some of these projects.
Speaker 7 (25:20):
So one example, especially thinking about affordability and achieving a
below market project is, as Beth said, funds are more
constrained for funds are harder to access, kind of across
the board, and challenges are also greater. But what we're
seeing is some really creative approaches. For example, one of
(25:41):
our credit unions has continued to be really committed to
helping their community members transition to lower carbon, lower utility bills,
so they've been able to procure a grant themselves. They've
also identified some state and city grant funds and also
(26:02):
some sort of technical assistance for consumers that's available in
their city. And they've also connected to Inclusive and we've
connected them to equipment manufacturers that are able to provide
below market rate below I think potentially even below cost
equipment and connect them to installers that are connected and
(26:27):
trained by that manufacturer. So we see kind of the
entire value chain covered from the credit union raising some
grant funds so philanthropy, plus some local incentive programs, plus
the actual manufacturer getting involved in providing blow market equipment,
and then to close that out and make sure that
(26:51):
the borrowers can actually access the projects, the credit union
is providing below market interest rate loans as well. And
I wish I could say more of the details. I
know I'm being very vague, but we're seeing several different
credit unions across the country put together put the effort
and the time. It's very time incentive intensive to put
(27:11):
together that kind of financing where it's blended and it's
you know, that certainly requires upfront coordination across a lot
of different entities. But then the end result is the
consumer can access a project that is actually going to
lower their energy bills and actually going to set them
up for you know, of a more reliable and efficient
(27:36):
home and also household budget. So that's one example in
the works right now.
Speaker 5 (27:47):
And I think it touched on this tour in your
in your earlier response, but I mean, are you seeing
your lenders also do some little things for commercial projects
or larger multi fanning projects.
Speaker 6 (27:58):
Yeah. I can discriva example something that's really important for
a number of our community lenders, our community resilience hubs.
For example, there's one in Georgia that one of our
lenders is working on where essentially it would produce about
two megawatts total portfolio with prox twelve of these resilience
(28:19):
hubs to provide solar and battery storage. Essentially, it's driven
by community facilities such as churches or other sort of
education YMCA type of community based facilities. The benefit, obviously
is that by scaling and bringing those trands, that bringing
each of those together into one sort of portfolio financing,
(28:43):
you can kind of improve the deal economics. You can
kind of streamline the process because, as you can imagine, individually,
doing that with each community facility is just kind of
time intensive from our lenders perspective, it's underwriting intensive. So again,
the approach is to really bring these community facilities together
from a kind of a hub strategy in order to
(29:05):
really maximize that financing. What we've noted on the project
is that right now there's a projected decrease of energy
cost of about thirty percent as a result of the
aggregation and being able to scale the financing to together
the ability to sort of distribute that energy to residential
as well as the community facilities themselves. And I think
(29:27):
there's like a connectivity also that just comes from knowing
that you can rely on community based facilities to be
the driver of energy efficiency in states where there might
not be the strongest relationship with the power companies, or
there may be issues of distrust with the power companies,
but having a community partner, being a lead or resiliency
(29:50):
is actually the driver that probably moves it from being
a very individualistic process with trust issues sort of always
in the residential mind and small business is as well,
to something where it's a shared value.
Speaker 5 (30:03):
Yeah, there was one last bit I wanted to ask
you all about, and that is just alternative funding sources.
As you know, even if it's just a stop gap
for now, are there any alternative sources that that are
stepping in or could could plug in if they wanted to.
Maybe maybe we'll start with Beth on that question.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean we're we are mostly talking to
private investors at this point who really care about making
progress and moving forward, but also obviously have cost of
capital obviously much more decentralized in its path. But what
we care about is progress, and so all of those
(30:45):
sources can be plugged in to us and our partners
to keep pushing forward.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
Yeah, not any any thoughts.
Speaker 5 (30:52):
And in terms of alternative funding sources, other ways, and
Inclusive is been building its own sort of secondary markets
work as well, and you know, I'm not sure you
know how much of that was even dependent on be
g GR versus other sources of funding.
Speaker 7 (31:09):
Inclusive has a secondary market for clean energy loans. We
are secondary market specifically for credit union clean energy loans,
and it is not it was not built. It was
built before g GRAF and it's not dependent on GIRAFFE.
With all of these things, Uh, the scale was set
(31:30):
to increase dramatic, dramatically with everything that i RA was
set up to provide. So we do continue to have
that secondary market, which is a way that credit unions
can really start to increase their loan originations and have
a place to you know, offload those loans as needed.
(31:53):
We also have seen so many different programs and again
this requires coordination, but we've seen so many different programs
at the city, county, and state level across the country
that have funding set aside, and now they're thinking about
how to repurpose those funds that were maybe originally set
(32:14):
up to leverage GGRF, how to repurpose those to still
make them available. So I would say, kind of checking
in locally to see what's available, which you know, Oscar,
I know you mentioned is really important and I think
there's going to be some opportunities there and they might
(32:35):
even be looking for suggestions from folks in their local community,
is how best to reallocate those funds.
Speaker 5 (32:44):
Yeah, I mean there are anything to add on this front,
and yeah.
Speaker 6 (32:48):
It's going to add in terms of new investors. I mean,
I guess the main point and main learning I've had
over the last six months is the work patients, because
my thought is that simply they're there are a lot
of investors out there who, you know, if you rewound
to twenty nineteen and there was no discussion of an
IRA on the horizon, were deeply committed to trying to
(33:11):
figure out how to solve climate issues locally. Caured very
deeply and got the connection between issues like climate and
low income communities, or climate and indigenous communities, or climate
and you know, sort of erosion of coastlines in how
that had long term impacts in certain communities. So that
was always there and it was I look at it
(33:34):
as that was what was leading to a GGRF, not
the GGRF created that environment. So part of what we're
doing now, I think collectively is trying to be patient
with investors, educate them on why these investments are important
and why. Again, the collective effort of groups like calverd
(33:55):
who have access to the capital markets, and groups like
Inclusive who have networks, and you know, the Justice Climify
are the right venues to reconnect with that desire to
invest locally that they had. And you know, in a sense,
no matter what ultimately we're able to, you know, recover
(34:15):
from this process with the EPA and with the Department
of Justice and all that's going on, we have to
keep these investors educated, informed and passionate and moving dollars
to support the work that we're all trying to collectively leave.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
While the court fight continues over the Greenhouse Gass Reduction Fund,
the next moves are local. Here's Neda Arabshahi from Inclusive
Center for Resiliency and Clean Energy.
Speaker 7 (34:51):
We certainly have not given up on all the momentum
that's been built, all the investment that's been obligated to
our organizations and also to the country, and we continue
to fight to make sure that we do anything we
(35:11):
can to bring those dollars and bring those investments into
communities all across the country. And I do think anyone
who is able to should continue to make it really
clear to their communities, their local elected officials that this
is something that's needed and necessary.
Speaker 8 (35:32):
It's not really optional to not have access to affordable energy.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Next City show
about change makers and their stories. Together, we can spread
good ideas from one city to the next city. Thank
you for listening this week. Thank you to our guest
Netta Arabshahi from Inclusive Center for Resiliency and Clean Energy,
Amir Kirkwood from Justice Climate Fund, and Beth Baffort from
Climate United. Thank you to Next City's Senior Economic Justice
(36:11):
correspondent Oscar Periobello for leading this conversation. Today's episode was
adapted from a webinar. To watch the whole conversation, visit
Next city dot org slash webinars. Our audio producer is
Slavana Alcala. Our show producer is Maggie Bowles. Our executive
producer is Ryan Tillotson, and I'm Lucas Grinley, Executive director
for Next City. By the way, Next City is a
news organization with a nonprofit model. If you like what
(36:33):
we're doing here, please consider pitching in to support our work.
Visit nexcity dot org slash membership to make a donation.
We'd love to hear any feedback from our listeners, please
feel free to email us at info atnxcity dot org,
and if you haven't already, subscribe to the show on Apples, Spotify,
Good Pods, or anywhere you listen to your podcasts.
Straw Hut Media.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
The clean energy transition is happening, but who is benefiting
from that transition is unequal.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
This is Lucas Quindley from Next City, a show about
change makers and their stories. Truth is, there are solutions
to the problems of pressing people and cities. If you're listening,
I hope it's because you want to spread good ideas
from one city to the next city. If you're rooting
for the transition into clean energy, and I hope you are,
then you were frustrated, to say the least, when the
Trump administration tried to cut roughly twenty million dollars of
(00:40):
the greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund that was meant to accelerate
our evolution. Today that money sits frozen in legal limbo,
but rest assured that on the ground, local lenders are
not just waiting around. Today you'll hear from three leaders
who are persisting on advances in clean energy. Netda Arab
Shahi from Inclusive Center for Resilient and Clean Energy, which
(01:01):
helps hundreds of credit unions finance solar evs and resiliency upgrades.
Amir Kirkwood, CEO of the Climate Justice Fund, which mobilizes
a national network of Community Lenders and Beth Bafford of
Climate United, a consortium led by Calvert Impact along with
CPC and Self Help to create a green planet. First,
(01:22):
we need to understand the financing plumbing that lets investment
flow into new innovation. We're going to learn how neighborhoods
turn one public dollar into many, even if the big
pot remains out of reach. Leading the conversation is Next
City's senior Economic Justice correspondent Oscar Periabella.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
You know the Green Assctast Reduction Fund.
Speaker 5 (01:45):
Obviously, it isn't the only climate investment program that the
federal government has full force over the past several years
or decades.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
You know, there's solar.
Speaker 5 (01:55):
Tax credits, all kinds of other programs, but this one
in particular at the greens Gas Production Fund. It was
a twenty billion dollar program created by the Inflationial Reduction Act.
And we're not going to talk so much about the
legal battle over those twenty billion dollars. The front of
administration has been trying to claw it back almost since
before it was even in office, and there they're been
(02:19):
lawsuits filed they try to get those funds released. Those
funds are technically sitting in a bank account right now
at City, and almost all of them have basically been
frozen and they're not moving out into these projects or
into the programs that we're going to talk about today.
That said, I know just from my own reporting following
(02:41):
around some of the groups that I've talked to over
the past few years, you know, small credit unions, community banks, CDFI,
loan funds, other capital providers, and I know that there's
been so much work put in even just to prepare
to get those twenty billion dollars out entered the ground
(03:03):
into projects through various lenders and institutions all over the country.
And so that's where we're going to start talking about today.
We're going to learn a little bit about why it's
important to support these these locally owned, locally controlled financial
institutions to put out not just the twenty billion dollars,
(03:24):
but also that all of the private dollars that we're
going to be leveraged alongside that. You know, the number
I've seen most often is one to five. So for
every dollar from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, there's going
to be around an average of five dollars and private
sector funds leverage alongside those dollars. So we're going to
talk a little bit about how that works and what
(03:46):
is still possible today. Or coming from three of the
Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, Finance and entuitees. They're all coming
from different networks that have come together over the past
few years.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
A mere the CEO of.
Speaker 5 (04:01):
The Justice Climate Fund, you know, tell us tell me
a lot about Justice Climate Funds and some of the
kinds of loans or projects programs that the institutions in
those networks are building.
Speaker 6 (04:14):
Justice Climate Fund, as you mentioned, was really born of
an effort by a series of networks of community development
finance organizations with the real intent of ensuring that the
efforts around community development finance were as inclusive as possible
of as many diverse developers, diverse CDFIs, but already depository institutions,
(04:41):
credit unions, as many bringing that world together in a
way to sure that capital really was equitable. When the
opportunity came along under the Greenhouse Gash Reduction Fund in
the IRA for that group to apply for funding to
bring clean energy finance two communities, they formed what was
(05:02):
called the Justice was now called the Justice Climate Fund
and the Justice Climate Funds real intent was to win
funding under the Greenoss Gastroduction Fund in order to deploy
capital through those networks of community lenders. If you think
about the split of the type of projects, some of
it was multi family energy efficiency retrofits, there was residential solar,
(05:26):
commercial real estate transactions, and particularly a lot of commercial
real estate that was tied to community facilities, healthcare, education,
all of those groups. So the impact was going to
be broad in terms of what we were all collectively
hoping to utilize that capital for going forward. I think
(05:48):
we found that still a strong demand at the community
level for financing for clean energy projects. After things started
to go sideway with the federal government, we stepped back
at just Climb fund and said, if there's no GJRF,
what does it look like to have community based clean
energy lending? And what we found was that among that
(06:11):
network there was still close to a billion dollars of
deal pipeline that needed some degree of concessionary financing, but
weren't in need of the deep subsidy or significant amounts
of technical assistance to get there. So what we've been
focusing our energy on is how do we get that
gap net through non traditional financing sources. Or traditional financing sources.
Speaker 5 (06:37):
That's great, And I know if I could actually to
talk a little bit about what it is about the
network of institutions that, you know, knowing the contractors bringing
in those minority of women owned contractor firms.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
To do some of this work.
Speaker 5 (06:56):
What is it about these institutions that makes them particularly
suited or able to to bring in those contractors versus
just any old bank.
Speaker 6 (07:04):
You know. Prior to this, I was the CEO of
Locusts Community Bank based out of Richmond, Virginia, and during
the time I was there, I saw the solar platform
grow from about ten million dollars in loans to about
fifty million, so roughly about ten percent of the overall
book by the time I left. And the reason that
that happened is that CDFI's minority depository institutions. They all
(07:27):
just figure out how to leverage all the resources, is
the best way I put it. So a deal may
go to market and it adds a little bit of
state tax credits, it may have some federal tax credits.
It probably figured out how to get a grant, and
obviously it's using the deposit base of that institution in
order to get it done. Step two is the closeness
usually of all the actors in the institution to the
(07:50):
decision making. And then the third thing, to me is
just the obvious issue of the if not, then who's
going to do it? Element of it that comes from
being ammunity lender. While we partner at all, CDFIs partner
with institutional money. Often that institutional money can't make the loans,
can't get to the economics to make a transaction makes
(08:13):
sense at a community level, and that's where the CDFIs,
the community development, credit unions, the others in this network
all come in because we can bridge between what institutional
money cannot do and what the community needs.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Even without the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund or GGRF, clearly
there remains a network that's ready to act on clean
energy and there are efforts to grow that network and
its capacity that have not stopped either.
Speaker 7 (08:44):
I am Netta Erbshahi, I head Inclusive Center for Resiliency
and Clean Energy. Inclusive is a fifty year old nonprofit organization.
We have the mission to help low and moderate income
people and communities achieve financial independence through credit unions. So
through both the programmatic work and the investment activities. We
(09:06):
support a network of over five hundred credit unions across
the country, and we launched our Center for Resilience and
Clean Energy to help provide community lenders with the training
and the technical assistance needed to bring affordable, accessible, clean
energy and energy efficiency financing to their communities. The joint
(09:26):
program with Center for Impact Finance at University of New Hampshire,
together with Inclusive, we have trained over one thousand lending
professionals from six one hundred and fifty we're probably closer
to seven hundred community lending institutions. So we have seen
most of those launch clean energy lending programs, or if
(09:49):
they already had a program, they may have grown it
or found ways to make sure that they can keep
it alive because sometimes, you know, markets change and possibilities change,
and we've help them to navigate those changes. Those lenders
have really started to kind of build local markets that
(10:10):
then create a positive feedback loop for many other players
have entered those markets.
Speaker 5 (10:15):
Yeah, and the seven hundred lenders that you mentioned that
you've helped train the institutions, can you give us events
of or you know they're all in urban areas, are
they also in smaller cities, even rural areas.
Speaker 7 (10:29):
They are located in a combination of rural and urban
and suburban areas. They're really all over the country, and
their reach is they lend collectively. They lend in all
fifty states. They also land in Puerto Rico and the
US Virgin Islands, and also actually in Guam. Typically, what's
(10:51):
common across all those lenders is that they really understand
their own community, and so we've designed support that guides
and how to create a program that uses their own
expertise about their community to offer loan products and also
kind of other support and accessing clean energy. You know
(11:12):
how to connect with the right contractors or developers or
installers for example. But it's really using their own expertise
to tie into and serve their communities.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
The federal government does not have a monopoly on change,
and that's why I say, as often as I can,
progress is not lost its local. After the break, Climate
United's Beth Bafford explains how they're pushing more clean energy
dollars into communities. Welcome back. Before the break, we heard
(11:49):
how inclusives, credit unions, and the Justice Climate Funds Network
are moving projects now even with GGRF dollars on ice.
Now we zoom out to the national plumbing that helps
those unders go further with best baffort of Climate United.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
So Climate United is looking at how to support economic
development and opportunity for underresourced communities. It's a partnership of
three national nonprofit organizations, Calvert Impact and Climate United is
a subsidiary of Calvert Impact, Community Preservation Corporation, which focuses
(12:27):
on multi family affordable housing and Self Help Ventures Fund,
which is a family of organizations two credit unions, a
loan fund, and an adovacy policy organization under the Self
Help brand. And we really came together to create a
we call it a multi segment strategy that could look
(12:49):
at the focus areas of the program and meet the
deeds at all different for all different types of people
and communities. You know, going into the network that we built,
which was you know, in some ways overlapping and intersecting
with net and Ameror's networks. Is really looking at the
institutions that at the end of the day have a
(13:10):
mandate to invest in lend into projects that support either
economic development or affordability. There's not as clear of a
line as folks tend to think of between community and
economic development and clean energy and clean technologies, it's the same,
it's you know, different ways to get to the same
ends in terms of job creation, manufacturing, business growth, and
(13:34):
affordability across the spectrum. And I think we're seeing that
even more acutely today than when the Greenhouse Gas Reduction
Fund was passed, in terms of the importance of looking
at energy affordability and energy access and reliability with a
very stressed grid, and when people have when business owners,
(13:54):
when communities, when schools, when nonprofits have problems like this
projects to get done, they go to their local lender
to get them done. They're the local problem solvers that
can figure out how to get from point A to
point B to bring those benefits locally. And unfortunately, the
rest of our financial system has structural challenges that no
(14:16):
longer allow them to play that local problem solving role,
which has created an even greater need for these institutions
on the ground.
Speaker 5 (14:29):
So Netta and Emir are or working on programs that
will sort of invest kind of directly into.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
The institutions themselves.
Speaker 5 (14:38):
With Climate United, the plan is a little bit different,
and it's structured to do something else. It's more about
the secondary market vehicles or loan purchasing loan participations.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
Can you talk a.
Speaker 5 (14:50):
Little bit about that and how that supports the network
of lenders that some of them are actually going to
be grantees inclusive from netto from a mere grant. You know,
they'll investments grantees. Those grantees will be able to do
more work and you'll be able to come in and
support them.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
How can you talk about the how?
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Yeah? Absolutely, So. There are two different programs that our
organizations were awarded funds through. So Amir and Netta were
awarded funds through the Cleaning Communities Investment Accelerator. That program
was specifically set up to provide essentially capitalization grants equity
grants to lending institutions in order for them to be
(15:33):
able to finance projects in their backyard. The program that
we were awarded through is called the National Clean Investment
Fund Program, and that program was set up essentially as
national green financing infrastructure meant to support the various needs
of projects, developers, operators and lenders in the ecosystem because,
(15:56):
as we all know who've been working in this space
for a long time, not bidding needs the same thing
at the same time.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
And then the.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Barriers to growth or the barriers to get projects done
differ depending on the different context of the project or
the work or the place, and so it was really
meant to be a compliment to provide equity support to
balance sheets in order for folks to either develop or
grow their green lending, their clean technology lending programs, but
(16:25):
also then be able to access various financial tools to
continue or expand that growth. And so for us that
was in three flavors. We were doing some direct kind
of highly structured deals where the brain damage was high
enough that other financial institutions were not willing to do it,
but we thought there was a really clear market transformation
(16:49):
or kind of market expansion argument too. We were investing
directly into lenders who could then use that liquidity to
do more projects, so basically leveraging some of the equity
they were getting through the Clean Community's Investment Accelerator program
to provide liquidity to do more deals. And then third
(17:10):
was to bus purchase standardized products. So look at where
there were markets that were more ready for standardization that
could start to leverage the secondary markets for kind of
better price liquidity and access the secondary markets in order
to further expand for anything that could be standardized and sold,
(17:30):
So looking at that for green mortgages, single family mortgages,
and multi family mortgages, looking at the space market, the
commercial property assessed clean energy market, and building out the
secondary market there, which Calvert and Past has experience in
really looking at where where there are markets that are
at that maturity level that we could help scale while
(17:51):
continuing to build the patterns and recognition to eventually get
to a secondary market for some of the non standard
assets that a lot of community lenders are active in doing.
And so it's really set up to be multiple tools
in the toolkit depending on what was needed in the
market at that time. And I think that's one of
(18:13):
the things that people don't really kind of hasn't fully
set in. It's just the importance from a policy perspective
of this kind of institution in the market supporting clean
energy adoption, because you know, at the end of the day,
the program was built with the recognition that the clean
energy transition is happening, but who was benefiting from that
(18:36):
transition is unequal, and I think that is the purpose
of this program to take the tax credits to take
the incentives to take all these other amazing things that
were in the IRA that are now getting wound down,
but to ensure they are being adopted with people, places,
communities across the country that otherwise we're going to be
(18:57):
kind of in the back of the line in terms
of clean energy option and really should be at the front.
Speaker 7 (19:01):
And so.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
That takes flexibility, It takes being a part of the market.
It takes being reactive to the market in order to
make sure that we're solving the right problem at the
right time to get us to that long term goal.
And most government programs aren't set up like that. Most
are much more prescriptive. And so that flexibility dump in
was was really a critical part of the design.
Speaker 5 (19:29):
In a way what you were building in terms of
the secondary market pieces or it's sort of like the
Fanny may or the Freddie mac or this kind of work.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
That that rights in terms like you know.
Speaker 5 (19:40):
Today we can look and say Brandy Man and Freddie
Mack are responsible for a majority of residential lending that
happens in any given year today that happens that happens
through private lenders. We then sell the loans to Fanny
may or Freddiemac and so you were looking for lenders
like the ones in your network. You know, some of
(20:00):
them are the same ones that neta end And I
mean you're building, you're working Beneth to make the loans,
and then you were going to purchase some of those
loans in the same way that Fan you or Freddie
would Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
I think I think in a lot of ways, it
was learning, learning from Fanny and Freddie what's worked and
what hasn't worked in that structure, to understand how we
address and serve the markets that we were trying to serve.
I think there are some things that were relevant and translatable,
some things where standardization is not always the answer and possible,
(20:37):
and so thinking about different structures where we could kind
of see what's worked in those markets, what hasn't where
people have gotten left behind, and figure out how to
address those markets again and kind of in the right
way with the right tools, but certainly meant to provide
kind of national infrastructure in a way that is similar
(21:01):
to the purpose of those entities.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
After the break, what funding is moving now, how to
reach a community lender where you live, and real projects
like affordable housing upgrades and resilient tubs advancing while federal
dollars are frozen. Welcome back. So far we've heard how
(21:25):
local lenders, credit union, CDFIs and community banks built real
capacity to finance clean energy, and how a national secondary
market can help them stretch those dollars. Even though the
Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund is frozen, there is still funding
available for projects. Here's a mere Kirkwood of Justice Climate Fund.
Speaker 6 (21:47):
Remember what GGRF was doing was providing subsidy fundamentally for deals.
It was not the driver, the sole driver of the
pipeline itself. So all of the lenders in our network
are still trying to identify ways to finance deals. They're
open for business, their banks and their loan funds. They
have to make loans, so they weren't allowed to fall
(22:09):
apart because the federal government decided to move away from
a policy. If this is being asked by a specific developer,
I would suggest you get in touch with either the
Inclusive Network. You can get in touch with Justice Climate Fund.
You can get touch with any of the networks that
are underneath the Justice Climate Fund, and they can help
(22:30):
you identify a bank that is in your relevant market
that might be able to provide financing. You know, you
still want to take advantage of the fact that they
are all local lenders. So if you're sitting in you know, Savannah,
Georgia right now, you want to be working with either
you know, one of the local green banks, local credit unions,
(22:51):
or local cdfives to that market.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (22:54):
Anything to add yeah, absolutely, So a little bit of
like stats on where our network is with this. With
our CCIA program, as Beth mentioned, we were building grant
pipeline and we saw that there were close to three
hundred credit unions that informed us they were ready to
(23:18):
apply for those grants, ready to start deploying their own
existing deposit capital which they were required to lend to projects.
And so those nearly three hundred credit unions are across
forty two states and three territories. They have two hundred
and fifty five billion dollars in assets, and they directly
(23:38):
provide financial services to sixteen million residents, you know, across
all those states and territories. And for the CCIA application
that they made to US for grants, they had committed
collectively nearly one point two billion dollars of their own
(24:02):
institutional capital to finance clean energy projects. But there are
definitely lenders across that network that continue to finance projects,
and they are many of them are trying to figure
out how they can support as many projects as possible
between now and the end of the year so as
to take advantage of any remaining incentives that will run
(24:25):
out at the end of the year.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
And asker, I know we're not going into kind of
detail on the lawsuit, but just for folks awareness, right,
I mean, I think we are not giving up on
access to the funds that are sitting in our bank accounts.
That is a process that is that is still underway.
And so just want everybody to be crystal clear that
as we think about the path forward and pushing forward,
(24:50):
we are all trying to creatively think about how to
make forward progress while also continuing to push to get
access to the funds that are legally are.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
And maybe we can talk about affordable housing builders for
whole housing looking for a flexible, blown market financing to
implement sustainability measures, how are you planning to provide support
that allows for blow market financing of some of these projects.
Speaker 7 (25:20):
So one example, especially thinking about affordability and achieving a
below market project is, as Beth said, funds are more
constrained for funds are harder to access, kind of across
the board, and challenges are also greater. But what we're
seeing is some really creative approaches. For example, one of
(25:41):
our credit unions has continued to be really committed to
helping their community members transition to lower carbon, lower utility bills,
so they've been able to procure a grant themselves. They've
also identified some state and city grant funds and also
(26:02):
some sort of technical assistance for consumers that's available in
their city. And they've also connected to Inclusive and we've
connected them to equipment manufacturers that are able to provide
below market rate below I think potentially even below cost
equipment and connect them to installers that are connected and
(26:27):
trained by that manufacturer. So we see kind of the
entire value chain covered from the credit union raising some
grant funds so philanthropy, plus some local incentive programs, plus
the actual manufacturer getting involved in providing blow market equipment,
and then to close that out and make sure that
(26:51):
the borrowers can actually access the projects, the credit union
is providing below market interest rate loans as well. And
I wish I could say more of the details. I
know I'm being very vague, but we're seeing several different
credit unions across the country put together put the effort
and the time. It's very time incentive intensive to put
(27:11):
together that kind of financing where it's blended and it's
you know, that certainly requires upfront coordination across a lot
of different entities. But then the end result is the
consumer can access a project that is actually going to
lower their energy bills and actually going to set them
up for you know, of a more reliable and efficient
(27:36):
home and also household budget. So that's one example in
the works right now.
Speaker 5 (27:47):
And I think it touched on this tour in your
in your earlier response, but I mean, are you seeing
your lenders also do some little things for commercial projects
or larger multi fanning projects.
Speaker 6 (27:58):
Yeah. I can discriva example something that's really important for
a number of our community lenders, our community resilience hubs.
For example, there's one in Georgia that one of our
lenders is working on where essentially it would produce about
two megawatts total portfolio with prox twelve of these resilience
(28:19):
hubs to provide solar and battery storage. Essentially, it's driven
by community facilities such as churches or other sort of
education YMCA type of community based facilities. The benefit, obviously
is that by scaling and bringing those trands, that bringing
each of those together into one sort of portfolio financing,
(28:43):
you can kind of improve the deal economics. You can
kind of streamline the process because, as you can imagine, individually,
doing that with each community facility is just kind of
time intensive from our lenders perspective, it's underwriting intensive. So again,
the approach is to really bring these community facilities together
from a kind of a hub strategy in order to
(29:05):
really maximize that financing. What we've noted on the project
is that right now there's a projected decrease of energy
cost of about thirty percent as a result of the
aggregation and being able to scale the financing to together
the ability to sort of distribute that energy to residential
as well as the community facilities themselves. And I think
(29:27):
there's like a connectivity also that just comes from knowing
that you can rely on community based facilities to be
the driver of energy efficiency in states where there might
not be the strongest relationship with the power companies, or
there may be issues of distrust with the power companies,
but having a community partner, being a lead or resiliency
(29:50):
is actually the driver that probably moves it from being
a very individualistic process with trust issues sort of always
in the residential mind and small business is as well,
to something where it's a shared value.
Speaker 5 (30:03):
Yeah, there was one last bit I wanted to ask
you all about, and that is just alternative funding sources.
As you know, even if it's just a stop gap
for now, are there any alternative sources that that are
stepping in or could could plug in if they wanted to.
Maybe maybe we'll start with Beth on that question.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean we're we are mostly talking to
private investors at this point who really care about making
progress and moving forward, but also obviously have cost of
capital obviously much more decentralized in its path. But what
we care about is progress, and so all of those
(30:45):
sources can be plugged in to us and our partners
to keep pushing forward.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
Yeah, not any any thoughts.
Speaker 5 (30:52):
And in terms of alternative funding sources, other ways, and
Inclusive is been building its own sort of secondary markets
work as well, and you know, I'm not sure you
know how much of that was even dependent on be
g GR versus other sources of funding.
Speaker 7 (31:09):
Inclusive has a secondary market for clean energy loans. We
are secondary market specifically for credit union clean energy loans,
and it is not it was not built. It was
built before g GRAF and it's not dependent on GIRAFFE.
With all of these things, Uh, the scale was set
(31:30):
to increase dramatic, dramatically with everything that i RA was
set up to provide. So we do continue to have
that secondary market, which is a way that credit unions
can really start to increase their loan originations and have
a place to you know, offload those loans as needed.
(31:53):
We also have seen so many different programs and again
this requires coordination, but we've seen so many different programs
at the city, county, and state level across the country
that have funding set aside, and now they're thinking about
how to repurpose those funds that were maybe originally set
(32:14):
up to leverage GGRF, how to repurpose those to still
make them available. So I would say, kind of checking
in locally to see what's available, which you know, Oscar,
I know you mentioned is really important and I think
there's going to be some opportunities there and they might
(32:35):
even be looking for suggestions from folks in their local community,
is how best to reallocate those funds.
Speaker 5 (32:44):
Yeah, I mean there are anything to add on this front,
and yeah.
Speaker 6 (32:48):
It's going to add in terms of new investors. I mean,
I guess the main point and main learning I've had
over the last six months is the work patients, because
my thought is that simply they're there are a lot
of investors out there who, you know, if you rewound
to twenty nineteen and there was no discussion of an
IRA on the horizon, were deeply committed to trying to
(33:11):
figure out how to solve climate issues locally. Caured very
deeply and got the connection between issues like climate and
low income communities, or climate and indigenous communities, or climate
and you know, sort of erosion of coastlines in how
that had long term impacts in certain communities. So that
was always there and it was I look at it
(33:34):
as that was what was leading to a GGRF, not
the GGRF created that environment. So part of what we're
doing now, I think collectively is trying to be patient
with investors, educate them on why these investments are important
and why. Again, the collective effort of groups like calverd
(33:55):
who have access to the capital markets, and groups like
Inclusive who have networks, and you know, the Justice Climify
are the right venues to reconnect with that desire to
invest locally that they had. And you know, in a sense,
no matter what ultimately we're able to, you know, recover
(34:15):
from this process with the EPA and with the Department
of Justice and all that's going on, we have to
keep these investors educated, informed and passionate and moving dollars
to support the work that we're all trying to collectively leave.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
While the court fight continues over the Greenhouse Gass Reduction Fund,
the next moves are local. Here's Neda Arabshahi from Inclusive
Center for Resiliency and Clean Energy.
Speaker 7 (34:51):
We certainly have not given up on all the momentum
that's been built, all the investment that's been obligated to
our organizations and also to the country, and we continue
to fight to make sure that we do anything we
(35:11):
can to bring those dollars and bring those investments into
communities all across the country. And I do think anyone
who is able to should continue to make it really
clear to their communities, their local elected officials that this
is something that's needed and necessary.
Speaker 8 (35:32):
It's not really optional to not have access to affordable energy.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Next City show
about change makers and their stories. Together, we can spread
good ideas from one city to the next city. Thank
you for listening this week. Thank you to our guest
Netta Arabshahi from Inclusive Center for Resiliency and Clean Energy,
Amir Kirkwood from Justice Climate Fund, and Beth Baffort from
Climate United. Thank you to Next City's Senior Economic Justice
(36:11):
correspondent Oscar Periobello for leading this conversation. Today's episode was
adapted from a webinar. To watch the whole conversation, visit
Next city dot org slash webinars. Our audio producer is
Slavana Alcala. Our show producer is Maggie Bowles. Our executive
producer is Ryan Tillotson, and I'm Lucas Grinley, Executive director
for Next City. By the way, Next City is a
news organization with a nonprofit model. If you like what
(36:33):
we're doing here, please consider pitching in to support our work.
Visit nexcity dot org slash membership to make a donation.
We'd love to hear any feedback from our listeners, please
feel free to email us at info atnxcity dot org,
and if you haven't already, subscribe to the show on Apples, Spotify,
Good Pods, or anywhere you listen to your podcasts.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.