 Hello and welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us today for Unlocking Capital for Climate Solutions, the Benefits of a National Climate Bank. I'm Dan Berset, Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. ESI was founded in 1984 on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress to provide science-based information about environmental energy and climate change topics to policymakers. More recently, we've also developed a program to provide technical assistance to rural utilities interested in providing on-bill financing programs for their customers. Whether for policymakers or the public, we do our best to provide informative, objective, nonpartisan coverage of climate change topics. Everything we do, briefings, fact sheets, issue briefs, articles, newsletters, even podcasts, is always available for free online. The best way to keep track of our work and access our resources is to visit us online at www.esi.org and sign up for climate change solutions and follow us on Twitter at ESI online. As the debate over infrastructure continues to rage and sputter, while somehow also expanding and contracting with each news cycle, here we are today to talk about a national climate bank. Nobody knows where things will end up in Congress. There are positive and negative indicators, real and imagined, everywhere you look and in every article you read. If you want to be optimistic, you have your reasons and evidence to back up your claims. And the same goes if you want to be pessimistic. Truly, at least inside the Beltway, things have long, at long last returned to normal. One thing we do know, climate change is an urgent threat. And to do something about it, we need to get started. Returning to the Paris Agreement and renewing our commitment to emissions reductions were great first steps back into taking climate change seriously. And the first budget proposal of the Biden-Harris administration is chock full of good ideas and smart investments that would marshal and harness and all of government approach to climate change. But we need Congress to act. We need new policies that ensure the US lives up to its international commitments. We need to make sure critical programs are funded and aim squarely at equitable and justice-oriented emissions reductions. And we need to really rethink US national energy policy. On Friday, we hosted a briefing towards the energy system of tomorrow to start sketching out what energy system infrastructure needs to look like a decade into the future, so we can understand where we need infrastructure investments now. It was the first of a three-part series, modernizing the US energy system, opportunities, challenges in the path forward. The second installment, modernizing America's transmission network, is Friday at noon. To sign up and watch the archived webcasts for Friday session and to sign up for the upcoming sessions, visit us online at www.esi.org. Much needed upgrades in our energy system would facilitate significant emissions reductions as we learned on Friday. By helping us tap renewable energy resources, move energy from where it is generated to where it's needed more efficiently, and make the most of new technologies to reduce our consumption and boost reliability and resilience. And another thing we could do in the context of infrastructure, if we want lots of emissions reductions, is to find a way to beat once and for all the boogeyman of clean energy upgrades up front costs. Sometimes upfront costs are just an excuse not to make an investment. And where this is the case, you can see the boogeyman's wicked sidekick, simple payback, lurking in the shadows, encouraging short-sighted decision making, and whispering, disparaging things about energy efficiency and rooftop solar panels into the ears of the unwitting. In many cases though, upfront costs represent an actual barrier, especially for households and small businesses that lack access to affordable capital and bear a heavy burden of high monthly utility bills. Things are relatively easy if you have good credit, low debt, cash just sitting around waiting to be spent, and a network of qualified contractors to do the work. But it's much more challenging to consider solar and energy efficiency if the initial investments are out of reach, even if you end up saving money and enjoying more ownership over your energy decisions. That is where green banks come in. Green banks are neither inherently green nor typical banks, but these governmental, quasi-governmental or nonprofit organizations can be extraordinarily effective when it comes to making affordable capital more accessible and equitable. Today, more than 20 green banks are operating across the US and providing targeted investments in rural areas, low and moderate income communities, and communities of color to advance equitable climate change solutions. These green banks use innovation and creativity to develop new ways to overcome upfront costs and help low-cost financing reach those who need it most. And that happens when upfront costs have been overcome, benefits start to flow. The emissions reductions from clean energy investments that were previously out of reach or unaffordable. Opportunities for ownership and wealth creation in low and moderate income communities and communities of color, and jobs, jobs and more jobs, and workforce development and training opportunities to put people to work. But green banks face a major constraint, resources. If only there were a national climate bank that could leverage the US Treasury to support state and local green bank efforts to reach more people and scale up cost-effective energy efficiency, renewable energy, beneficial electrification, energy storage, electric vehicle charging, and climate adaptation projects, if only. Well, there are proposals in Congress that would do just that. And so our panel today is assembled to help describe all the benefits of a national climate bank could deliver. While we are remote today, there is still a chance for you to submit questions and comments. Please feel free to share your thoughts with us by email at EESI at ESI.org, or follow us on Twitter at EESI online. We will do our best to incorporate your input into the conversation. And now I get to introduce the first of our four fabulous speakers. Jeff Shubb is the executive director of the Coalition for Green Capital. He's a leading expert on green bank finance institutions that accelerate investment to cause an equitable clean energy transition. Jeff leads the Coalition for Green Capital work around the world to create green banks, which have driven more than $4 billion of public and philanthropic investment in renewable power, building efficiency, and climate solutions. Jeff, welcome to the briefing. It's great to see you. I can't wait for your presentation. Great. Thank you so much, Dan. And pleasure to be here. And I think you all can see my screen now. So I will just jump right in. So, as Dan said, my name is Jeff Shubb. I'm the executive director of the Coalition for Green Capital. We've been working at the federal level and at the state level and around the world for a decade to create state at local and now national green banks. And so I want to give you an overview starting with a quick history right up front of the history of federal green bank policy and then walk through the current proposals and why are they essential to transition to a clean energy economy. So, as the pictures here show the movement started back in 2009 with then representatives Ed Markey and Chris Van Hollen working together to introduce a federal green bank legislation that was adopted with bipartisan support as an amendment to the Waxman Markey cap and trade bill. The provision had bipartisan support and passed out of the Senate in our committee. But for those who remember, sadly, that bill never reached the floor of the Senate because it was tied up in cap and trade. But representative and then Senator Chris Van Hollen kept the idea alive reintroducing the bill several times. And that led to then both Senators Markey and Van Hollen joining up again to reintroduce the National Climate Bank Act in 2019 and we're soon joined by Representative Dingell introducing the National Climate Bank Act and now what is known as the Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator Act in 2021, which brings us to today. And what does that act do it has a one time up front federal appropriation to a independent nonprofit corporation that would act as a national green bank to fund and finance clean energy projects around the country as well as fund and finance the operations of a network of state and local green banks all across the US. The proposal for the accelerator is explicitly endorsed by the President of the United States as part of the American Jobs Plan. It was also included in the President's counteroffer a couple of weeks ago to Senator Capito as part of the bipartisan infrastructure conversation. It has a wide set of supporters and endorsements, which we can talk about in detail but I'd love to quickly go through the slides and give you an overview of green banks and the federal proposal. What is a green bank this is always question number one. You put in $1 of public money and you leverage $3 of private co investment and the money turns green, which is this, you know, cute graphic showing combining blue and yellow and you get green. What this leverage ratio represents is the actual, you know, more or less average leverage ratio of public and private money the actual green banks in the world have experienced and driven through their ongoing investment activity. This represents what we sort of call the static project level leverage, meaning in any given project this number might, might vary but on average it works out to be three to one over time. This number actually increases because the National Green Bank because it's an independent nonprofit has the ability to both recycle its loans and issue new loans and also to borrow money in capital markets on its own credit, which it is the federal government. This number actually increases significantly over the course of time which we see playing out with green banks in the real world today. And as I said this is this is not just slide where this is not theory we know that this actually works and you'll obviously hear from some green bank leaders in a moment. This map shows the 21 green banks and 15 states in the District of Columbia that over the last decade have proven out the effectiveness of this model they've spent under $2 billion to cause $7 billion of total investment in the clean power platform. This map is expanding rapidly. Our organization is currently working with lawmakers coalition coalitions of supporters stakeholders market participants in 22 more states covering 37 states in the country. In most of these states, these are bipartisan efforts. We're a Republican governor of Alaska introduced Green Bank legislation about a month or so ago. There's bipartisan legislation in Maine, there's bipartisan legislation in Minnesota. There is bipartisan legislation in a number of states right now moving forward to create state green banks, based on the proof of concept and the fact that this has been bipartisan or non partisan in many states across the country. The concept of leveraging private investment into clean energy is turns out to be popular across party lines creating jobs as Dan said, is a benefit, lowering energy costs as a benefit these tend to be non partisan issues hence the track record of bipartisan support and co sponsorship for the house bill the accelerator, which is supported by representative Fitzpatrick from Pennsylvania and representative young from Alaska, both of which have green banks either an operation or under development. What would the accelerator actually do on day one it would fund and create state green banks in every single state in the country to do three things. It would help develop and deploy local solutions to local problems. It would involve the private sector specifically investors utilities and contractors, and it would involve local stakeholders and communities to develop the solutions and ensure that all communities and citizens and businesses are able to participate in the transition to a clean energy economy. What are the, what are the, what's the problem here what are green banks actually designed to solve. So let's take a look at four different maps the country. The first problem is the carbon power platform hits consumers harder and differently in different states across the country. And typically folks talk about this in terms of the price per kilowatt hour of power, which you know in a state like Alabama or Mississippi you might, you know I'll think correctly well the price per kilowatt hours relatively low in those states, but ultimately the what matters is not so much the price of the electricity but the level of burden placed on a household, compared to the income experience in that household and that's what this map shows is the energy burden across the US in the purple and darker blue states or where that burden is most significant. And unfortunately this often lines up with states that have low income and other sort of economic indicators of distress. And what this map really shows is that the kinds of solutions they have to be delivered to delivered to each state really does need to vary based on the energy burden in the economics in each state. Second map shows where the carbon emissions actually are because states differ in their dependence on carbon power in this state shows the red states are the ones with an absolute level of emissions that are the highest this is not per capita this is an absolute interestingly, I think when we do this now for and people can check me I think of the 12 red states. Six of them voted for the Democratic presidential candidate and six of them voted for the Republican presidential candidate in the 2020 election. The place and location and source of these emissions is a bipartisan problem. And this also again tells us that the nature of the investment that has to be made in each of these states varies across the states according to the emissions profile. Third and unfortunately this this map aligns quite well with with this map is an indicator just one of the health impacts negative health impacts that come from these carbon emissions this one happens to be the rate of asthma attacks in children and we can see the really dense concentration of this of the health impacts on children aligns pretty darn well with the location of those carbon emissions. So health is an important problem that needs to be resolved. And lastly, what's the problem is the nature of this transition is going to hit workers differently in different states. This map comes from a recent White House report on the issue of energy transition in energy communities which identifies six distinct regions of high reliance on energy fossil fuels for economic growth and job creation. These again line up with this which lines up with this, which tells us again the nature of the kinds of investments that have to be made where those investments have to go. And of course, there's pretty high alignment and correlation between the problems that have to be solved. And so today what does the situation look like this is a map showing wind and solar today across the country the blue dots are solar, excuse me the blue dots are wind and the red dots are solar. This is what it has to look like by 2050 to reach net zero. Basically this tells us that clean energy projects need to be built and financed in every state in the country all over the country. We do see not surprisingly concentration of blue for wind in the upper Midwest also very dense concentrations of offshore wind along the northeast coast and also on the west coast and then of course solar in states like Florida and across the sun belt. The benefit of this transition to a clean power system is that will increase household savings. If you pair this large utility scale or distributed power investment with household electrification the kind of the kind that Rick wrote about specifically in the New York Times today through a house on a piece about household electrification. This is the benefit and we can see that the savings accrue to the households across the country where the deepest savings are geographically focused in places where there is a high energy burden and high reliance on fossil fuels. So there's a lot of different ways that people talk about the potential pathways to a clean energy transition and what our energy system might look like in 2050. There's studies from Princeton and Stanford and government organizations but fundamentally they all actually have the same set of principles that involves a massive increase in market share from wind and solar power that has to multiply by about seven X. Several decades, there has to be a massive increase in investment in solution of high voltage transmission lines to carry the clean power to points of consumption. There needs to be battery storage deployed across the entire grid, and there has to be a rapid conversion of heavily driven vehicles from gas to electric. These are the kinds of activities that the accelerators going to invest in across this across the entire country. There's a lot of conversation about the quality and number of jobs that can be created through this kind of a clean energy transition and statements that jobs in the fossil fuel sector are intrinsically better or higher paying. This is data gathered both from real world Green Bank activity as well as based on independent expert studies showing the kinds of jobs and the amount of job creation that could be realized through the implementation of a national Green Bank, which shows fundamentally that these jobs are like all other jobs in the US economy, some of them are high paying, some of them are not some of them are union, some of them are not the average like a span of a job in the mining industry I believe is 3.8 years in the US and so turn over and moving on to new opportunities is an intrinsic part of the US dynamic labor market as it exists today. That will remain true with the clean energy economy as well and the jobs will be abundant and specifically located in every community in the country because that's where the investment actually has to go. The proposal for the clean energy accelerator or the National Green Bank is focused on and authorized to invest in seven different sectors, all of which have an emissions impact their renewable power, great infrastructure, transportation, buildings, climate resilience, industrial decarbonization and sustainable ag and forestry, again all of which have a direct tie or impact on the trajectory of climate change. As I said the benefits of this will be realized in every community specifically because of the accelerators ability to target its investments into each state into communities working with state and local green banks to tap into the local solutions that are needed to meet those local economies and communities needs. The $100 billion of the accelerator as was put in the house bill would lead to $800 billion of private co-investment over the next decade, nearly a trillion dollars of total investment. This again is due to the compounding leverage of project level co-investment, capital recycling and relending and borrowing on the green banks own credit without the full faith and credit of the government. This is not fan may this is not a GSE this is an independent nonprofit without the government's guarantee. The impact is that there will be four million jobs created in four years in every community across the country. In critical component of this transition though as we all know is that there has to be a just and economically fair transition as the United mind workers of America put out in a recent statement this transition must be a true boil do we agree with that. The accelerator will be required to invest 40% of its investments into frontline low income communities and energy reliant communities that are transitioning to a new economy. This is a central part of the provision and is also built on the track record of what state and local green banks are already doing significantly focusing their investments into underserved communities. This is the overall impact of this from an emissions standpoint independent expert analysis found that the accelerators and the investments driven by the accelerator will reduce Americans emissions by about 20%. This is the single biggest climate reduction program per dollar in the American jobs plan the bang for the buck here is significant and again this is not theory this is not slide where this is based on the real world experience of what green banks have actually achieved. This is the biggest investment opportunity of the century, and something like a national green bank and a network of green banks across the country need to be part of the effort to lead the way for that investment opportunity. Barling a little bit for my boss our CEO and co founder read hunt was in a prior life the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission in the early 90s during the Clinton administration is as he often likes to say, we've done this kind of a big change before as quickly as we need to do it today. The communications platform effectively had several trillion dollars of investment to completely turn over every element of that platform. In the course of about 15 years. There's been a lot of similarities between the telecommunications grid that was rebuilt in the energy and electric grid that also has to be rebuilt. I don't need to go into detail on this but suffice it to say we know that this can be done because we've done it before and not that long ago and so we can do it again. So, worry of the accelerator. It's going to create green banks and drive investment in every state. It delivers local solutions for local problems and is able to target it through its nonprofit structure. So far the relevant bills are the clean energy and sustainable accelerator act HR 806 in the Senate side, the National Climate Bank Act Senate bill 283 and happy to discuss in more detail about the where those bills stand and the pathways to passage and any other details on green banks so thank you so much. Jeff for a really excellent overview presentation. And actually it's a good opportunity to remind everyone that while people are watching us right now, everything will be available online so if you'd like to go back and look at any of Jeff slides, I really like the way those formats work together to tell the story of why this is so important. And some additional resources as well that Jeff provided everything is available online at www.esi.org, and you can watch the presentation to because we'll have an archive webcast and some point in your futures a written summary as well. Thanks Jeff that was a great presentation I really appreciate it. Thanks Dan. We will now turn to our second speaker, Brian Garcia is the president in chief executive officer of the Connecticut Green Bank, the nation's first state level Green Bank. The Green Bank model demonstrates how a smarter use of public resources can attract more private investment in the green economy, reducing the burden of energy costs on household and businesses, creating jobs and local communities, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions that cause global climate change with its message of inclusive prosperity, the Connecticut Green Bank won the innovations in American government awards in 2017 by the Harvard Kennedy Schools Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. Brian. Thank you so much for joining us today. I will turn it over to you. Thank you so much. Great. Thank you Dan for that introduction. I know Dan's going to get the slides up. But I just wanted to kind of build off of Jeff just remarks earlier because the Connecticut Green Bank was actually created following the representative congressman Markey and Ben Hollins bill. In 2009 the American Clean Energy and Securities Act so as that policy didn't move forward. The Reed Hunt working with Governor Malloy, Dan Estee here in the state of Connecticut brought that federal model to the state of Connecticut effectively creating the Connecticut Green Bank on July 1 of 2011 so we're actually approaching our 10th year anniversary. Let's go to the next slide. So we are a quasi public organization. That is to say that we're very similar to a corporation of the state of Connecticut we use private sector disciplines to achieve public sector goals. We're very focused on social and environmental profit as opposed to financial profit. And we also focus per statute on financing clean energy. So clean energy in Connecticut has a specific definition renewable energy energy efficiency alternative fuel vehicles associated infrastructure fuel cells are also considered renewable energy here in the state of Connecticut because we manufacture them creating lots of manufacturing jobs. So today, the Connecticut legislature voted on a bipartisan basis to expand the scope of the Connecticut Green Bank beyond clean energy to include environmental infrastructure, which means that we can take this model to also support waste and recycling efforts, infrastructure, water, adaptation and resilience and other environmental markets parks and recreation so the legislature is keen to see us deploy more private investment in environmental infrastructure in the state. We're currently supported by two sources of public revenues a system benefit fund, as well as Reggie allowance proceeds which comes to about $30 million per year. Our goal is to take that $30 million of public resources and attract multiples of private investment so last year we enabled nearly $300 million of private investment in Connecticut clean energy economy. From a federal perspective, obviously we are very interested in seeing the accelerator move that will allow us to increase our activity in the state of Connecticut. And I will talk about a green bonds and our ability to issue bonds at the tail end. Let's go to the next slide. Our focus is to confront climate change. And by doing that we want to ensure that we are increasing and accelerating the flow of private capital so I think when, when people think of green banks as Jeff has alluded to. What we're essentially trying to do is take a limited amount of public resources smartly manage those resources to invest them and mobilize multiples of private capital investment. And for more investment you get all of the benefits that were after those benefits will effectively strengthen our communities in Connecticut, especially vulnerable communities that is a priority for us. Vulnerable communities has a specific statutory definition here in the state of Connecticut. And when we do that we're going to make the benefits of the green economy inclusive and accessible to all individuals families and businesses and I'll talk about some of those benefits in a second. We are focusing on pursuing investment strategies that advance market transformation and green investing. The green bank model obviously does that. I'm also going to talk about our ability to issue bonds and how that is helping to advance the green bank model as well. Let's go to the next slide. I liked your comments earlier about the payback from the customer's perspective because that's that's exactly what we're trying to push away is, is thinking about payback and rather than payback we'd like customers to think about cash flow, would you rather have more cash in your pocket today than you did before. So this is trying to describe what the green bank model is after you could think of an energy bill before you undertake any sort of clean energy improvement. And go ahead and Dan and hit the button twice. And what we're after is, you could imagine, going to a home or a business, providing them with opportunities for on site renewable energy conservation load management and providing that end use customer with access to capital to finance those clean energy improvements to address those upfront costs. And depending on the savings that can be created from those clean energy improvements, you could effectively create net savings that that's what we're after is to put more cash back in the pockets of that end use customer by reducing their energy bill, giving them a debt service payment. It's important that the loans and leases that we offer our long term maturity consistent with the useful life of those measures which can be up to 20 to 25 years. And when you finance that you leave more value that you can give back to that end use customer so that's important delivering them economic value upfront, and then we get from clean energy deployment, all those societal things that were after cleaner energy a more resilient grid and healthier populations as a result of reducing particulate matter. Let's go to the next slide. So here's how the green bank model works from a supply side perspective go ahead and hit the button once. So I was talking a little bit about those public resources that we received $30 million a year in these public resources go ahead and hit it a couple more times let's go ahead and move through. Great. So our goal is to utilize those public resources in a way that reduces the perception of risk from private investors. Our goal is to get them to invest in clean energy deployment in our state, and we do that by using our public resources and we say we are willing to risk our public resources for you to put your capital into the market. And in Connecticut we have about a six to one leverage ratio Jeff showed a three to one. So we're about twice that across our programs here in the state of Connecticut and go and hit the button once more time. One more. There you go so the financial returns go back to the private investors these are loans these aren't grants. It's important to say so we, we've had $500,000 of losses, over about $640 million of loans so far and knock on the wood here. So the, these loans pay back and ultimately go and hit the button once more as a result of the this increased investment in the green economy we get all of those social and environmental benefits that we're after. Let's go to the next slide. Here's a quick look at them. And I guess the key point I want to make here is that investment drives everything. So it this is not just government investment this is private investment the more we can use a limited amount of public to enable more private. So that investment is going to drive the deployment of clean energy in our in our context it is renewable energy and energy efficiency. When you deploy those technologies you actually reduce the energy burden, you know the percent of household income spent on energy or the percent of operating expenses paid on energy by businesses. So we're reducing that energy burden, and we get all the results that we're after as a quasi public or government agency economic development we're seeing jobs being created as a result of that investment tax revenues are generated that go back to the state to support other initiatives that the state policymakers want to achieve. As we deploy more clean energy we get the reduction of emissions greenhouse gas emissions to address climate change as well as particulate matter that improves public health as we reduce those particulates. Let's go to the next slide. This is just a high level overview, a bit of a tombstone diagram for those of you who are in the banking community, showing some of our public private partnerships over the years with the number of different local state regional commercial banks, national banks, investment banks and the like utilities, all enabled by our participation in the deals to de-risk transactions and to make the market for clean energy investment in Connecticut attracted to their capital formation. Let's go to the next slide. I'll walk through give you an example of a few projects. This first one here is an energy infrastructure example and this has to do with making residential solar PV and energy efficiency affordable and accessible to low to moderate income families and communities of color. Jeff was talking earlier about energy burden, the percentage of household income spent on energy. That is what's deemed affordable, anything greater that is unaffordable. Our low to moderate income families in Connecticut can pay 10, 15, 20% or more of their household income on energy. That creates an affordability gap. Connecticut's affordability gap for low income families is about $1400. We have proven through direct data collection that we are able to reduce that affordability gap by $1300 through a financial approach of combining solar PV with energy efficiency through a partnership that we have with positive and solar. Again, we structure a lot of private investment around this transaction and to the diagram I showed before. Our goal is to reduce the energy burden by displacing those upfront capital costs with the financing solution that puts cash in the pockets of participants. Let's go to the next slide. Here's an example of a waste infrastructure project. We have a food waste challenge here in the state of Connecticut, so we are developing anaerobic digesters that would collect food from large producers across the state to various centralized anaerobic digesters. That digester gas, methane gas would be utilized. Actually, it is in this facility here in southern Connecticut, quantum bio power, utilizes that gas and produces onsite combined heat and power participating in the renewable portfolio standard in this transaction. We participated with People's Bank. We provided subordinated debt at 20% of the capital stack. They provided 80% of the remaining debt. Again, we are first loss and it's our participation in the deal that's drawing in local commercial lenders into the policy climate in this environmental economy. Let's go to the next slide. Here's an example of a water infrastructure project, Connecticut, all of New England and the Northeast for that matter have a number of old and aging dams. All of them needing to be refurbished or either torn down refurbished or turned into hydropower. We happen to work with a company that has licensed a European run of river technology and is now producing hydropower at this restored dam in Meriden, Connecticut. This transaction utilized a bond structure where we're selling the power to the local town of Meriden for over a 30 year period with the opportunity to go to 40 years. So this is providing value back to the town in terms of savings. And we've worked with Key Bank Bank of America Webster Bank and a number of other financial institutions on this transaction. Next slide please. As I was alluding to before, we have really been inspired, we have the ability to issue bonds per statute. So that's that's that's unique to Connecticut, not all green banks have that capability. We were inspired by the series war bonds of the 1940s. $185 billion was raised by over 85 million Americans who wanted to support our government and the fight against Nazi Germany. That $185 billion in today's value raised over four year period was about $3 trillion. So we were inspired by that to say that couldn't we issue bonds to raise capital by selling those bonds to citizens. So typically bonds green bonds for those of you who are in the market are sold to institutional investors at $5,000 face value bonds and they'll buy hundreds of thousands of them. In our case we wanted to get citizens to provide them an opportunity to buy fixed income bonds to support investments in clean energy in Connecticut. There are three elements to these bonds one is the use of proceeds has to support the Paris agreement. That is that they have to go towards mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation and resiliency to the impacts of climate change. The second thing is that the bond face value has to be no more than $1,000. And lastly because we're issuing them to citizens we want there to be certification and verification that the use of proceeds is going towards the intended purpose. So this is the green Liberty bond. We had a $25 million raise that we were working on this last Earth Day April 22. We had $100 million of demand. We sold bond sold these bonds to Connecticut citizens and people across the country who wanted to invest in Connecticut, including institutional investors municipalities and others, all wanting to see investment happen in the clean energy economy in the state of Connecticut. Last slide. So this is just to say, the name of our comprehensive plan is is green bonds us. You know I just talked about green bonds the financial mechanism, us being capital us, you know, we sell green bonds to citizens in the US, but it also means green, the environment that unites us, it unites us. So, so really our focus in the future is to continue to enable more investment by helping to reduce energy burden, deliver all these societal benefits that we're after because when we do that we're actually demonstrating care and concern for our fellow citizen and people in the community so our vision statement is a planet protected by the love of humanity. And I think that's our last slide. Great. Thank you so much. In my intro I use the words innovation in creativity and you just our audience just saw that in practice thanks so much for a great presentation of all the cool stuff. I also think it's fascinating how Connecticut's green banks programs have evolved over time. It's an excellent story. Thank you so much, Brian. Before I introduce our third panelist I just wanted to remind our audience that if you have questions or comments, you are welcome to send them to us we'll do our best to incorporate them into the conversation after our fourth panelist. You can send an email to ESI at ESI.org can also follow us on Twitter at ESI online. Our third panelist is Dewan Andrade. She is founder and president of Evolution Business Development Incorporated consulting firms specializing in sustainable business practices. Dewan has extensive experience in micro finance micro lending sustainability strategic planning and clean energy projects. And she was also an adjunct professor at the Anowak University Latin American Center for social responsibility. She is responsible for providing strategic direction and oversight of the financial and operational aspects of the nonprofit solar and energy loan fund or self. She down in Florida she has served as self strategic advisor and CFO since January 2013. Welcome to the briefing. I can't wait to hear your presentation and see your slides. Thank you very much. Wow you took me back in time there with that intro. Thank you. It's a real honor to be here sharing this panel and just sharing with everybody, you know what we are doing here in Florida with our Green Bank which is a different model. And I just love I mean I'm going after Brian and that's a, you know, tall order to follow but I love that Brian presented a Green Bank model that is really kind of a top bottom big investment opportunities. And it really highlights the possibilities where there is also a positive policy environment, you know, so I'm going to show you what self does in Florida with zero policy to incentivize these investments. So I'm just need to share my screen here. Can you confirm that everybody can see. Whoops. Can you see the presentation. Not yet. We can see that you're started the screen share but we don't see that. I'm sorry, let me try this again. Okay. How about now. Yes, now it's working. All right. Thank you. Well, the solar and energy loan fund known as self today is a certified CDFI. You have knowledge problems. Okay. So a little bit of background, we are the first and only nonprofit Green Bank in Florida we started in were founded in 2009, actually by a group of at the time commissioners, including the founder of this organization that coward who is now the executive director. And this was right after the housing crisis. So self was created with the intention of revitalizing the economy through green jobs. And at the time. President Obama had assigned in the aura, which was the American Recovery Act, which much like today was trying to help the economy recover. So this vision of creating an inclusive green economy came about, and self was founded with a $3 million grant from the US Department of Energy in 2012. You know, they decided that they needed to create a model, which would leverage more capital because $3 million were not going to go too far. So in 2012 self became a certified community development finance institution and for those of you who aren't familiar with that. The CDF eyes were created to fill financing gaps. And to serve communities that are left behind by traditional banks. And basically what it does provides a channel to reach underserved communities. And do work that banks did not want to do so the CDF eyes have a mandate to do 60% of their lending in low and moderate income census tracks. And it was really take the CDFI model that was typically structured to do SBA loans and affordable housing and all that, and actually use it to do green loans, mainly initially energy efficiency and clean energy. So the other thing that we innovated in was really shifting the banking paradigm of lending based on credit scores to doing lending based on ability to repay not on credit scores income and assets and that is basically micro lending methodology that we imported, and we applied and now has turned out to be, you know, quite successful. So as a result of this, what we did was, we leveraged those $3 million with $25 million to date actually we just closed a few more investments so again that leveraging ratio in our case is about eight to one. We have deployed $18 million in unsecured single family home improvement loans. So again, we are like bottom up we do our work at the grassroots level, and we provide direct loans to homeowners small average size $10,000 loans. These $18 million loans at $18 million in loans have been deployed with about 54% of those clients having less than 680 credit scores. We've done about 2050 home improvements in Florida with a small portion in Alabama, South Carolina we're about to open up Georgia. And 74% of our clients are low to moderate income. Our average default rate to date has been less than 2%. In addition to helping low and moderate income homeowners access affordable financing based on ability to repay rather than credit scores. We also recruit contractors to do the jobs and we focus on recruiting mom pop shops minority contractors. So for example, one of our local contractors has done more than $1 million in business using our financing to date we have over 600 contractors in our network. And they're all being able to reach underserved markets with our financing available available to them at no cost to them. We also, as a green bank are able to leverage more capital so we just got a $5 million JP Morgan Chase grant in 2019 that will allow us and has allowed us to create a new fund that is really focused on filling gaps in financing stacks for affordable housing. So we want to do green affordable housing what that means is kind of what Brian was talking about that we have to reduce the energy burdens for low income residents. And many of those residents are renters and affordable housing buildings, and they get a rent subsidy but ultimately they have to pay their bills and their energy bills take up a large disproportionate amount of their income. So we want to push the affordable housing sector into a green housing stock that can be lower cost to operate and to live in comfortably and with dignity. So we're going to do 300 affordable we're going to finance 300 affordable housing units leveraging $65 million. Again, that is a huge leveraging about 1821. And then we also have a $50 million commitment from our investor for our pace program, which is exclusive to St. Lucie County. That being said, I'm going to go quickly from here on and I want to share some stories with you. We are mission is to rebuild and empower underserved communities by providing access to affordable innovative financing for sustainable property improvements including energy efficiency renewable energy when hazard which is storm mitigation. We do water quality and disability and aging in place home adaptations. So this is just the picture. I'm going to take a home and what do we do and you can see that we basically will do everything that is going to improve the structure and make it more efficient to reduce those energy burdens, save money and be able to free up cash to repay the loans. So these are some of our lending programs and with that, what this speaks to is that we have customized programs for the type of markets that we are serving. So our CDFI flagship program, basically no minimum credit score, unsecured 5 to 1099%. That's the terms go from three to 10 years, and so on. But the one program I want to focus on for a second is Kiva. So as a green bank, these are the things that we can do because we work in a space that most traditional lenders don't want to work in and we also know how to underwrite savings and climate. So we are able to create programs like our Kiva program which is a crowd funded peer to peer lending program. What that does is allows us to post one of our lowest income clients or zero credit score clients, veterans, single women heads of household, the most stressed clients. We can post on Kiva and raise funds for a loan globally from about 1.7 million micro investors across the globe. So we have funded loans $10,000 loans with 200 people from four different continents and we're bringing capital into our communities to help the lowest income, the most distressed clients. And similarly we're shifting paradigms by giving them the lowest income and the most distressed lowest score clients, the lowest cost loan. Because we believe that financing should be equitable. And people that have less should be paying less instead of paying more. So that being said, in addition to our loans, we don't just give loans. What we do is we really protect the client and we protect the contractor so once we approve a loan, the contractor gets a notice what the client picks their contractor out of our contractor network, the contractor does the job. And then we pay the contractor directly. We also include financial coaching or credit rebuilding, because we do report to credit bureau so people can rebuild their credit with us. We also make sure that the project is done to the client satisfaction but also to code and passes all inspections. So we're protecting the client and we're also ensuring that the contractor gets paid. And of course we're creating more jobs for contractors. This is just a snapshot. It's interesting and I wanted to show you this that wind hazard mitigation is 40% now of our total lending. Energy efficiency is the number one and solar is still a small portion of our lending. And if you look on the other side, our client by income levels you'll see that 76% this was as of this year is low to moderate income. So, you know, people think that oh, we just have to we have to go solar immediately and yes we do and yes we want to. But the fact of the matter is that low and moderate income communities have a need a lot of work done before they can go solar. They need to fix their roofs. They need to access home insurance. They need to become more energy efficient. And like Brian was describing, we need to really reduce the energy demand before we go solar. So what this shows us is that the market really needs energy efficiency, climate resilience, and solar, and all of those have to be available. So other programs that we have our multifamily nonprofit community energy improvement loans. And these are, again, new funds that we're going to be using to fill capital stacks to be able to do more affordable housing. That is green energy efficient and resilient. And also, as a green bank we're able to innovate, and we're able to access philanthropic funds so we're able to get a grant from the Lowenstein Foundation to be able to do the first rooftop solar on a public housing building in Florida This is in Miami Dade and for the first time ever, we're going to put a solar system for emergency response with battery storage on a building that houses 92 low income vulnerable elderly residents. Just a few stories. This is a picture of our program manager the treasure coast of Florida and Carol is a widow that was recovering from back surgery had no credit. Her husband had passed he had all the credit. And as you can see in the picture she has a back brace. She had no AC in her, her home or AC had gone out, and nobody would give her alone she had been rejected six times before a contractor referred her to us. She came in with her friend, we were able to get her alone immediately and this is her the moment she found out, and she literally cried. She was a Turner US veteran single mother, three jobs. She is a cancer survivor. She has three jobs to keep up her for kids, her roof was damaged by a hurricane. She had buckets in her home, or everything was, you know, falling apart. She could not get alone. She came to us we were able to raise funds for her through Kiva. She got her loan she got a new roof she's now safe and healthy. So, I hope is a US postmaster live worked on his life at the post office, and he was able to get a solar system installed in his home in St. Pete, and here he is very proud. This was last year doing COVID, and very proud to be able to access his solar system. So, just a quick snapshot of our capital composition. This year. Well, actually, in 2013. This was just one pie. We basically had the DOE grant. And since then we have 25 investors, including faith based organizations that you see right there. They were the ones that helped us get to where we are now. Then we have bank and CRA investments, non government grant loan capital basically like a JP Morgan Chase grant that is actually for loan capital. We have health systems that have invested invested in us private capital such as pace, and then the government funding, the federal funds are only 16% of our capital stack right now. So this is what we can do as green banks. And if we want to serve LMIs then my communities we can do it through a CDFI structure. Just to finalize this is how we see green banks able to generate social impacts environmental impacts and economic impacts in a kind of one stop shop. Thank you. Thank you for that excellent presentation and thanks also for helping put faces with these projects. It helps so much to remember that it's not just about insulation and solar panels it's about the people who live in the communities that are better insulated and are powered by solar and whose lives are improved by these sorts of investments so thank you very very much for a great presentation. Our fourth panelist is joining us from Colorado, Brittany Heller has been in the solar industry in a variety of roles since January 2015, including residential project development construction and training. In 2018 she joined grid alternatives, Colorado, where she is now the senior manager of workforce and community engagement. Brittany and her team host paid solar job training programs across the state, with a strong focus on providing opportunities for individuals facing barriers to employment. Welcome Brittany I'll turn it over to you. Thank you Dan. Let me get my screen shared here. Wonderful. Can you guys see that all right. Looks great. Awesome. Great. So thank you you guys for having me today and this opportunity to speak this morning. As I mentioned my name is Brittany Heller and I work for a nonprofit called grid alternatives Colorado. So I will hop right in and tell you a little bit more about grid alternatives. Grid alternatives mission is to build community powered solutions to advance economic and environmental justice through renewable energy. For the past 20 years grid alternatives, and we are the nation's largest nonprofit solar installer. We have been working with communities most impacted by economic and climate injustices to bring the benefits of clean energy and jobs to all individuals and families. We will not achieve a clean energy future in Colorado without addressing the systemic injustices that have disproportionately impacted communities of color. The benefits of renewable energy, which are cleaner air, long lasting careers and lower energy bills must not be limited just to the privileged. The low income communities and communities of color are oftentimes left out of the conversations about our clean energy future. Our work at grid has brought meaningful energy savings to families reduced greenhouse gas emissions and provided hands on training and experience for solar job seekers. Clean energy can be transformative for people, the planet and the economy. A growing solar industry needs skilled workers at all levels. Clean energy jobs are meaningful and they pay well too. With grid alternatives hands on training, individuals learn solar skills while participating in and building real world solar installations. We make these training opportunities accessible to groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in the solar industry, including women, people of color and those impacted by the criminal justice system. Our graduates jumpstart lifelong careers connecting with our employer networks, or sometimes starting their own successful business ventures. Grid alternatives has installed over 11 megawatts of solar for underserved communities in Colorado since 2013. Included in our project portfolio is a 1.2 megawatt community solar array, which we built in partnership with the Ute Mountain Ute tribe. And this is also in one of those priority regions that Jeff had mentioned earlier. This project will provide electricity for 112 tribal residents, businesses and enterprises. And it's an important step forward for the tribe as they transition to a clean energy future and advance their own energy sovereignty. 14 tribal members in this project joined grid to install the solar array, 11 of which were hired as interns. So they gained solar installation experience and valuable transferable skills. And the number of the interns also worked for the tribe's public works department. And that will be the tribal entity who's going to be managing and maintaining their own solar system moving forward. And this particular system will offset at least 10% of the reservations overall energy usage, and it's going to be eliminating about 1500 tons of greenhouse gas emissions by year one. And this is just one example of what can happen with the deployment of renewable energy, advancing tribal energy sovereignty, bringing meaningful jobs to individuals and transforming communities. And the solar industry, it's growing rapidly across the United States. As more states follow Colorado's lead in setting targets for achieving 100% renewable energy, solar deployment will continue to grow as well the need for a skilled workforce. According to the National Solar Job Census from 2020, the path necessary to achieve President Biden's goals to decarbonize the grid and expand domestic manufacturing will require more than 900,000 solar workers across the supply chain by 2035. And this is going to take considerable financial investment to achieve. And this data is also compiled by the National Solar Job Census, and it demonstrates that there's continued growth in the solar industry, and it's also becoming more and more diverse. In 2020, nearly all demographic measures of diversity in the solar workforce saw modest increases, bringing the numbers to an all time high and most categories since they've been measuring it. And diversity is comparable to other industries and is growing, but there certainly needs to be a lot more work done before the solar industry matches the diversity of the United States. Environmental justice and equity need to remain at the center of policy priorities and growth planning. And financial investment and clean energy programming and initiatives will contribute to the growth of jobs as the industry rises to rises to work at the intersectionality of climate change, energy justice and a transition to a clean energy future. And as the renewable energy continues to grow so does compensation. And this is also a point Jeff brought up in his, in his chat as well. And continued growth and compensation will be really important to ensure address a just transition to a clean energy future. And, you know, of course in 2020 the pandemic contributed to a reduction in solar jobs. Several states including Colorado saw modest levels of employment growth or lower levels of job loss. And Colorado has seen a 35% employment growth rate in the solar industry since 2015 and remains one of the top states for solar jobs per capita. And Colorado continues to work aggressively to meet the state goals of achieving 100% renewable energy by 2040 grid alternatives will continue to provide valuable workforce training for those seeking career pathways in the clean energy sector. The transition to a clean energy future is happening, and to achieve a just transition together requires investment funding. The creation of a national climate bank would have significant impact on advancing equitable access to clean energy, preventing greenhouse gas emissions and creating critical jobs. So I've talked a little bit about some of the numbers but I wanted to put some faces to those numbers and tell you guys about a few trainees who came through grid alternatives programs. This is one of our trainees Michael Martinez. He came to our program after being out of work for several months. And like many he had been struggling with the pandemic and the repercussions. And just a little over a month ago him and his mom had stopped by our offices at grid alternatives. And she was just gushing about how proud she was of her son and this new job where he is building huge solar arrays at the Denver International Airport. So being able to come to a paid solar job change solar job training program changed absolutely everything for Michael. Another remarkable story comes from a trainee Paul Matthews. He had been in contact with grid for quite some time to get enrolled in our paid solar job training program. He was really excited about blending his military experience with his unmanned aircraft license to build his very own solar drone company. And so now he works at a local solar branch office building out their site survey and drone department while also building a drone company of his own training gave him the knowledge and the skills that he needed to gain employment as well as build his business in the solar industry. With the right investment, we can build an economy that is transformative for Colorado inclusive for all individuals and creates a clean energy future. So thank you guys so much and I will hand it back to Dan. Thank you Brittany for a great presentation. I just want to commend you on the paid training makes all the difference in the world. Is that something that's a recent or is that something that's recent or is that something that has been sort of integral to this from the start. Particularly for grid Colorado's office that has been an effort for quite a while to make everything paid training but as you can imagine particularly as it relates to people with barriers to employment. A lot of folks can't just take unpaid time to get the skills they need to eventually get a higher paying job. So having that ability really advances equity and inclusion in the industry. Yeah, it makes such a difference so thank you so much for a great presentation. There's still an opportunity to ask questions. If you would like people on our audience are welcome to ask questions either follow following us on Twitter at ESI online. They can also send us an email ESI at ESI.org. But it is my pleasure to now introduce my colleague senior associate Miguel Yanez. Miguel works very very hard with our on bull financing program interacting with green banks rule utilities around the country. He is going to kick off our Q&A. So Miguel I will turn it over to you and stand by. Hi thank you Dan and thank you everyone for taking the time to watch this great briefing and we have really heard great presentations from these great lineup of speakers. And so I want one common thing that have really run truth for all the presentations is how all of them how the green banks and and work by by Brittany in Colorado have really strive to include everyone increase equity by sparring clean energy development. And so I would like to ask you. How do you provide services to underserved communities communities of color and law and moderate incomes households and how will that increase with additional capital from a national climate bank. And so I would like to start with with Jeff, we haven't heard from you since the beginning so it will be great if you can start us off and then we'll go in the order of the presentations with Brian next and then wine and then pretty big. So they're going to wait Jeff. Thanks. Great. Thanks Miguel. Yeah, I mean it's sort of the premise of addressing underserved communities and delivering energy and climate justice and supporting those who are have the least access to these kinds of solutions is is central to the green bank model and is built into the to the federal proposal as well. You know what this comes down to in many ways is you got to combine the right local capacity and knowledge with the right kinds of funding addressing equity and access is intrinsically very very localized and is really about meeting folks where they are and understanding their challenges and their barriers. And so it's really really hard to resolve that the standardized national scale solution that it really requires engaging local partners which is a big reason why the national proposal was built around a national network based structure with state and local green banks and other sort of financial partners. And so it sort of empowers the local partners to develop the solutions that are necessary, but the capital piece here is essential because yes there's sort of the, the points that do on made and that we all know well about you know if you don't have the right credit score in your right have the right income level you can't qualify for standard loan and those standard loans aren't really well suited for this kind of financing because they're not the right terms anyhow. And so it's really a question of how do you deliver the right terms and knowing, you know, you have to meet the market where it is and meet the customers where they are and in some cases that means, you know, 4% financing for eight years sometimes it's 1% financing 15 years sometimes half of it is paid with a subsidy and half of it's paid with financing and repaid and just the need to be flexible about that is crucial I mean we can't pretend like everything has to be done on specific commercial terms. But it needs to be sort of the power of that flexibility needs to be built into the federal proposal and then feed down to the network of local partners. And then the last thing I'll say before letting others jump in is, you know, in our sort of work around the country of the last, you know, decade but really especially in the last years, two years digging into this question. One thing that comes up over and over and over again is, is not just the need for local solutions but local participation and decision making and how those solutions come together and are actually implemented. This feeling of needing to have and wanting to have local control, whether it's sort of advisory bodies or committees that have a say in how programs are designed to literally developing cooperative ownership structures for community solar project so people literally control the assets that are being built. It is about finance and delivering that kind of capital solution but there's a process element to this to that central to how this is all rolled out. This is Brian just following up on Jeff here. So the example I was giving earlier of solar for all. That is one arrow in our quiver, you know that is for low to moderate income families that own homes. Currently in the state of Connecticut and I'm sure across the country, black and Hispanic families own less than 5% of their homes versus white families at 85%. So, even though we're able to demonstrate that we can completely eliminate the energy affordability gap. It's only for a small subset of the population so so that's to say that there are no silver bullets. We need to identify a number of other strategies here in Connecticut we spent a lot of time over the last year, working within a regulatory structure to get the rules right, get the compensation right. We have a chair of our public utilities regulatory authority who has put energy affordability as the number one objective for the regulator, which then translates into bid preferences adders. Other treatments for low income families affordable housing families so when you get that context right the regulatory structure right. Then you're now starting to attract the right developers to come in and do the projects, ultimately getting to the reduction of energy burden on our most vulnerable citizens so so we've been spending a lot of time getting those regulatory rules right. I would all this increase with additional capital from the National Climate Bank I mean you know I talked about us having 30 million and turning that into over $300 million a year using state resources by having federal resources. You know, we're going to go further. We're just touching the surface of the available market in the state of Connecticut so we've probably reached maybe 5 to 10% of the available market, which means we have a lot more investment to go. The National Climate Bank would provide us with capital to enable us to bring in more private investment to deliver more value to families and businesses so we're looking forward to being a continued partner with the accelerator and other green banks across the country to that end. Sorry okay well there's so much I'd like to say about this but I know I have limited time so I'm just going to. This is kind of our core mission right what we do, and I would start by saying to the question of how can we better serve LMI, I would start by saying the first thing we need to do is change the way we think about LMI. You know it's just like, no that is not a riskier market per se, de facto. LMI communities are not LMI because they're lazy or poor or don't have assets. LMI communities don't trust banks. They don't trust the systems. So we, that's the first thing I urge everybody to do is kind of shift that thought, and look at LMI also in a spectrum, because LMI together those, you know those low and moderate levels span a big spectrum 30% to 120% average median income that's the definition of LMI. The difference between somebody living on 30% average median income and 80 to 120% is abysmal. So we have to really understand what the market needs are in that LMI category. As I said, if you've all heard of the United Way term Alice, that's a really good description of the moderate the M part of LMI which is asset limited income constrained and employed, or income earning a population. So in this case, they're straddling the line of poverty, not poor enough to get grants, not rich enough to be able to access affordable financing. They're stuck in the middle, about 40% of Americans fall into that category. This is an opportunity right there, waiting to be served, but they don't qualify per the banking standards that are existed. So, how do we reach these markets. We look at them as a put as potential credit worthy people, we understand their needs, we customize products to be able to accommodate to their cash flows. So, I think, these are the things we're doing. And that's why it's really important to consider all of these models that you've heard about here are doing things differently. We're not like inventing financing, we're just applying it in a different way and successfully, because we are proving that these markets that have been left behind or skipped over whatever actually work. They are good investments. And I just want to say that with a national climate bank. It would unlock not only what Brian said I'm going to echo his words I mean we're just like starting here we're going to leverage those funds 100 times over and over and over again, because we've proven. We have done just small a small sample of $18 million in 2000 projects 74% LMI they pay back, and we're redeploying those funds over and over again. And the other thing is that if we want to go net carbon neutral or want to really impact our carbon emissions, we do need to go renewable we need to go solar or geothermal or whatever renewable energy is applicable in in each state. But here's the thing you realized in our portfolio that we don't have enough solar. That's because we not only the the market isn't ready, but we don't have the right type of flexible financing with the national climate bank. We would have the long term flexible low cost financing to be able to provide more solar to those markets. Think of it 40% of America that's sorry I get very passionate about this. Yeah, I really appreciate you saying a lot of that as well. And as for grid alternatives, how do we, you know, connect with these underserved communities. The real way to do that for us is just being really embedded into the communities. We have really strong networks with community based organizations we network through those we have reciprocal partnerships, all throughout the communities where we work with mission aligned organizations. And if we were to have additional sources of funding, we would be able to scale up our existing programs at a much, you know, bigger level than where we are currently. And we'd also be able to begin to offer new programs with this additional capacity at grid and an organization and how we function will oftentimes get projects that sort of fall into our lap and then figure out how are we going to fund this and it is really really challenging. It would be really great to flip flop that be able to have a source of funding and then be able to go to those partners. And as I'm thinking about this, I mean we have several different nonprofit organizations who are almost in line you know we're trying to figure out the special sauce to make these projects happen. You know, if they were to get solar projects on their rooftop they'd be able to save money on their utility bills, and they'd be able to put that money back into their programs, you know, immediately. In grid and how our organization runs we can have trainees on those projects it's another way to help folks get experience, but it's just tough to find the funding to make it happen. So having a national climate bank would just turn this issue on its head for us. Thank you, thank you Brittany and those were really thoughtful responses and really how you all really bring out your, how passionate you all are about green banks and how a national green bank can really spark energy development. And so my second question goes to a lot of the points that Brittany has just made on how she partners with local, local entities so to that my question is how do you work with existing federal, state and local stakeholders including the private sector to provide and support clean energy investments. So, Brittany you're starting to talk about how you work in a way to embedded with communities if you can start us off with that question with providing an example that would be great. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, as I mentioned, in my last answer we can always find a really great innovative impactful project. And then what's always challenging for us is finding that funding. And so we are often stringing together public funds, you know we work with local and federal agencies. An example that comes to mind immediately is utilizing CDBG dollars or community development block grants, which are you know essentially HUD dollars. And it's great because when we are able to get connected to that those funds, all of the benefits go to the homeowners that we're working with. We also do work a lot with the private sector as well. There's some benefits there they can utilize tax credits, but they also need to see a return on investment. And depending on what their appetite is there that can eat into those benefits of the project that could be, you know, more equity focused than using those LMI customers. So it's a it's a fine balance but if there was again additional funding, more access to funding, we could be doing so much more and also less energy of our time would be chasing all these different various funding streams. So yeah, that's that's for great alternatives. Thank you Brittany. If we could continue with the wine. That would be great. Thanks. Sure. Thank you. Well, I think there are many, many opportunities to leverage capital and relationships. So we work very closely with local government, for example. In our expansion, we have relied on local governments to provide seed grants for capacity building because we run on such thin margins that we don't really have the venture capital or the capacity to expand on our own. So each local government have their own goals and Florida doesn't really have like these incentives and big goals as a state. So each local government is taking reins, you know, of their own sustainable development. So we have a lot of people, St. Pete Hillsborough County, Orange County, City of Orlando, I mean I can name many that we're working with. Of all these goals, they want to go, you know, they sign up for the Sierra 100 renewables they say sign up for all these things but then the question is, how do we get there. How do we do it. So we are an implementation tool. So that's how we frame ourselves. If you have goals as a local government, you don't have to reinvent the wheel you don't have to spend all this money and creating these. We come in and we'll do the work for you. So that's how we've been able to really leverage partnerships and local governments we also work very closely with other nonprofits, for example, financial coaching. We don't do that ourselves. We partner with nonprofits that are specialists in that. So you know that's an efficient way of doing that. We also work with organizations that are job training and doing audits and things like that. So that partnership, leveraging those partnerships is really important and to Brittany's point. I think we also need to get better at connecting resources, for example, like heap and ship programs and all that you know we have people that that don't know how to access that so we can we are a resource center for everybody as well. And I think that the one of the important things to note is that in those communities when we partner, everybody wins. And there's always a bank that needs CRA credits. So then we can leverage that capital as well, and we can bring in more capital so I think that it's really important to note that we're not trying to do this work on our own we don't want to and we can't. This is really bringing together public private philanthropic funds and you know I gave some examples the solar system on the public housing building that is grant dollars and it's going to be an example to replicate. And another great example we have is working with Martin County utilities we've created a septic to sewer conversion loan with them, they are collecting on bill, we leverage their $200,000 with $2 million, and it's a win win win for everybody so that's just an example of how, how we can leverage those partnerships. Great and in terms of Connecticut so I was I was thinking about what are some of the more recent state federal interactions and engagements between our state and the federal government. The one that came to my mind was Connecticut we have really ambitious greenhouse gas emission reduction targets 45% reductions based on 2001 levels by 2030. That rolls up into actually the national determined contributions the commitment of the US government to reduce its emissions by 50 to 52% by the year 2030 based on 2005 emissions so, so we are in line with President Biden in terms of reducing our emissions as a foundation. But secondly, you know what Brittany was saying was really interesting you know we as we try to identify more opportunities to drive investment specifically for our most vulnerable communities. You know when we look at HUD projects section eight housing projects, you know how can we mobilize investment in that sector, given some of the existing challenges with how compensation happens with tenants and property owners in that segment. You know with the goal being to try to reduce the energy burden and give income back to families. We don't want that to offset incentives and other things that those families receive so maybe there are some opportunities for the federal government to innovate and to allow some innovation around the edges so that we can begin to solve the owner tenant problems through state and federal partnerships. The third thing Dewan was mentioning it that Community Reinvestment Act just comes to my mind. You know what is the role of the Department of Treasury in broadening qualifying projects and activities to enable mitigation and adaptation projects for climate change to qualify for CRA credits you know why not give more credits to entice local banks regional state national banks to put their capital to work in partnership with green banks to drive more investment. CRA is a great platform for that and then just lastly you know it's kind of learning from each other you know Dewan as you were talking earlier and you showed that slide on resiliency in Florida the hurricane windows I think you had and you had water that just had me think about you know our vulnerable communities here in the state of Connecticut and what we can do to broaden clean energy to build in battery storage to find ways to help our families recover faster from the impacts especially our vulnerable communities so by us talking in this way we learn from each other and to the extent we're learning from each other we can accelerate these solutions within our respective geographies. And if I can just put some quick comments I mean so three things would jump out to me from from the collective comments here one is realizing that most of the kinds of investments and activities we're talking about here are return generating good investments good credits but they are also complicated and that's why these projects very often are not getting built as you need someone with a mission orientation to take the time to actually figure these deals together with this whole set of partners public and private where everybody else wins everybody else gets to put their money to work but nobody else is going to put in the time and as the New York Green Bank former president often used to say bang your head against the wall and incur the brain damage to figure out how to do these transactions that's very much what we're talking about is figuring out how to put these transactions together and so that sort of comes across all of these from a federal standpoint I think an important thing here is understanding how his national climate bank policy is very specifically designed to be complimentary to existing federal programs. So, you know we've heard folks talk about like he's been CRA and host of other federal programs designed to help bring those together and maximize the impact of them from a coordination standpoint. It's also designed to be able to specifically address smaller and distributed projects that are notoriously hard for traditional federal financing programs like the DOE loan program office or the USDA utility service, very, very hard and you're impossible for them to actually address those kinds of projects. And then finally the targeting again those traditional federal financing programs basically cannot say we're going to invest in this way in these projects over here, but in a completely different way in completely different projects over here they're just not designed to have that kind of targeting flexibility. In the last category of partnerships with John just touched on which is really important here is utilities. The transition to a clean energy future, no matter what your view on the situation is utilities are a big part of it, and they're going to have to be partners along the way. And so for example, one key component of the National Climate Bank Act or the accelerators. The accelerator is going to be authorized to engage in direct negotiations with utilities who are in the process of transitioning and closing down a coal plant and what do you know they're stuck between a rock and a hard place for the stranded asset costs that either gets eaten by the investors or gets put into the right pairs and you know what usually the right pairs are going to lose that battle. The accelerator can help address some of those rate payer costs and provide the financing to support the transition to a cheaper clean energy solution. And so this is designed very much to have utilities be partners at the table with the accelerator. Well thanks for that. We are just about at time. And so I'm going to phrase this more as a comment but allow folks if they have anything that they want to weigh in on. So, Miguel in particular at ESI Miguel works very closely along with our colleague John Michael with rural utilities to implement on bill financing programs and I mentioned that in my introduction, and there's a program at USDA called rural energy savings program. And that's a big driver for on bill financing and recently as of last April green banks have been eligible to apply. And so I wanted to mention that. Jeff kind of building on what what you just were talking about as well, you know, on bill financing provided by rural utilities and cooperatives and municipal electric utilities things like that, an opportunity perhaps for green banks to develop relationships productive relationships with utilities, and also leverage the mechanics of on bill financing to reach underserved communities. Are there any thoughts on RASP, rural energy savings program from around the group or the potential for on bill financing. Before we wrap up. Just wanted to say strongly endorse that effort, I think, you know, a lot of green banks across the country are interested in use on bill financing a key access expanding tool, and sometimes they're complicated to implement I mean the existence of your program indicates how hard it is for these to implement because you need that kind of technical assistance to connect the pieces and so we need to use every tool in the toolkit for sure. I would add that it should not be just rural. You know, I mean, we just need it to be for everything. And it really is at the will of the utilities right now like we had the opportunity to work with Martin County utilities which were amazing to them. They understood that they saw how beneficial it would be but I think it's a it's something that really needs a lot of work. So, yeah, I'm going to leave that to Jeff and the coalition, who by the way we got that lowest in grant through the coalition for green capital so that's another example of how, you know already acting like a, you know, like a consortium is capital into the green banks locally so I think we should just note that these collective efforts really really work. I mean it's not just talk, we're doing things. I would just add in Connecticut we have 169 cities and towns. And the USDA thresholds there Dan are less than 25,000 in population determined your reality. So that that applies to about 50% of Connecticut's families and businesses. And I just say that our application is in. So, looking forward to USDA review and a positive determination. Great. Well, thank you so much we are at time and so we do have to wrap. I would, you know, just like to thank Miguel for leading a great Q&A. Thanks to Jeff, Brian, Duane, Brittany for four excellent presentations. I really enjoyed all of your insights and hearing about the work that's being done from the different perspectives and I in one of our goals for this briefing was to focus on the benefits. And so, to me that came out loud and clear that if we had such a thing as a national climate bank. The benefits will flow like, like we haven't seen yet, which is exactly what we need. And of course, it won't hurt to get emissions reductions on the books either. So thank you so much for taking time out of your busy Tuesdays to join us in our audience. We will go ahead and wrap. In addition to thanking our panelists and thinking Miguel, I would like to thank everyone else at ESI who made today possible. Dan O'Brien, Sidney O'Shaughnessy, John Michael Cross, Amber Todorov, Anna McGinn, Omri LaPorte. Also like to thank our four fabulous interns, Anna, Ashlyn, Irina and Jackson for all their hard work behind the scenes. We have a lot on the screen right now. We would really appreciate anyone in our audience who has two minutes to take our survey. We read every response means a lot to us when you take the time to fill out the survey. If you had any technical issues, if the live cast wasn't working well, if you have ideas for additional topics, we would love to hear everything that you have to say. So, if you'd be willing to do that we'd very much appreciate it. Lastly, I wanted to just quickly plug today is a Tuesday. It happens to be the same Tuesday or happens to be a Tuesday when we're also releasing our latest issue of climate change solutions which is our bi-weekly newsletter. If you haven't already subscribed to that, I encourage you to. You can visit us online at www.esi.org. Also, if our briefing archive, everything that you just saw, presentation materials, additional information, all of that is also online. You will be able to make that a resource for you. And then lastly, before I let everyone go to the rest of their Tuesdays, we have two more briefings in the next two weeks. We have one on Friday about transmission, Friday at noon Eastern, and then we have one next Friday about the grid edge and that will wrap up our three-part energy system modernization series. So RSVP links are available. And of course, if you sign up for the newsletter, you automatically get all that stuff every other Tuesday. Thank you so much to everyone in our audience. Thanks to our four panelists for excellent presentations. Thanks for Miguel for working us through the Q&A. Hope everyone has a great rest of your Tuesday and we will hopefully see you on Friday. Thanks.