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The $20B US ‘green bank’ program just funded its first project (www.canarymedia.com)

submitted 1 month ago by alyaza to c/usnews

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The complicated regulatory and financial requirements are some of the reasons why it has taken months for the consortiums to start dishing out green bank funds. But somebody eventually had to go first.

That honor goes to Climate United, the consortium in charge of nearly $7 billion in federal green bank funding, more than any other group. On Tuesday, it announced what is both its first investment and the first project financed by the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund: a $31.8 million loan for Scenic Hill Solar, a Little Rock, Arkansas–based solar developer.

That money will provide pre-construction financing for solar installations that will help lower the utility bills and carbon footprint of the University of Arkansas system. At 66 megawatts across 16 sites, the project will be the largest commercial solar deployment in Arkansas and the fourth-largest university renewable energy deployment in the country.

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[–] t3rmit3 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

These groups face a hefty mandate: to use that federal funding to spur $150 billion or more of private-sector investment in climate and clean-energy projects

I love how our shitty system can only give money out to private companies to build Green infrastructure, instead of just, you know... using the money to build the infrastructure in the underserved markets ourselves.

Climate United also hopes that this first-of-a-kind financing of the pre-construction expenses of mid-size solar installations — a category of costs that includes permitting and interconnection fees and which developers now pay for themselves — will help other private-sector lenders “reduce the delta between actual risk and perceived risk in the market,” she said.

I understand that this is supposed to spur private entities to invest their own money into these projects, but they don't actually cite anywhere in the article that this works. It also mandates a US-centric supply chain, which (while good) also means that the actual cost to the government/ public is being hidden by subsidies already being paid to those companies.

The closest the article gets to saying this works is:

This kind of climate lending has a track record to build on. Over the past 12 years, green banks — government-backed and nonprofit entities now operating in 17 states, which provided the model for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund — have enabled nearly $22 billion in public-private investment.

but that doesn't specify the breakdown of public vs private. The goal for this fund is $20B public, to spur $150B private, but color me skeptical that will actually happen.