Canary Media article about Green Banks Featuring our Work

How a new national green bank could steer $27B to clean energy projects

The Inflation Reduction Act’s seed funding could spur 10× as much in private-sector lending for community solar, efficiency and more in underserved neighborhoods.

24 August 2022

By Jeff St. John

Read the full article on Canary Media’s website here!

Eli Hopson, CEO of the DC Green Bank in Washington, D.C. — the first city-based entity of its kind in the U.S. — added that green banks can lower the risk profile of relatively novel forms of lending for private-sector banks, as entities like NY Green Bank have done for community-solar projects and affordable-housing efficiency and electrification projects.

“For a commercial banker, these projects take as much work as a $10 million project or a $100 million project,” he said. ​“For them to learn the new market of solar credits, get comfortable with the technology — that’s a big investment of time and resources.”

Jessica Pitts, co-founder and principal of Flywheel Development, a Washington, D.C.–based sustainable development company that’s working with DC Green Bank on installing community solar in the Fairfax Village community, noted that ​“the challenge with financing is the relative newness of the solar market compared to other business ventures, like restaurants or apartment buildings, that traditional banks are comfortable with financing.”

“One of the roles the green bank has served in working with us is legitimizing solar as an asset class or business enterprise that can be financed and should be financed, that it’s viable and makes sense,” she said.