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On April 4, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced its selections for $20 billion in grant awards under two competitions within the historic $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), which was created under the Inflation Reduction Act as part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda. The three selections under the $14 billion National Clean Investment Fund and five selections under the $6 billion Clean Communities Investment Accelerator will create a national clean financing network for clean energy and climate solutions across sectors, ensuring communities have access to the capital they need to participate in and benefit from a cleaner, more sustainable economy. By financing tens of thousands of projects, this national clean financing network will mobilize private capital to reduce climate and air pollution while also reducing energy costs, improving public health and creating good-paying clean energy jobs in communities across the country, especially in low-income and disadvantaged communities.

Vice President Kamala Harris and EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan will announce the selections under these two grant competitions in Charlotte, North Carolina. While in Charlotte, the Vice President and Administrator will meet with a homeowner in a historically Black community, where a local nonprofit, Self-Help, worked with community partners to finance, renovate, and construct energy-efficient, affordable homes for low- and moderate-income families. Thanks to that partnership, this first-time homeowner pays significantly lower energy bills and has a healthy and comfortable place to raise his family. The selections the Vice President is announcing will ensure more families can experience those same benefits. In fact, one of the selections being announced today will allow Self-Help and its partners as part of the Climate United Fund’s application to deliver similar home efficiency projects to over 30,000 homes across the country.

Collectively, the selected applicants have committed to driving significant impact toward the program’s objectives. They will reduce or avoid up to 40 million metric tons of climate pollution per year, making a significant contribution to the Biden-Harris Administration’s climate goals. They will mobilize almost $7 of private capital for every $1 of federal funds, ensuring that each public dollar is leveraged for significant private-sector investment. And they will dedicate over $14 billion of capital — over 70% of the selections for awards announced today — toward low-income and disadvantaged communities, making the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund the single largest non-tax investment within the Inflation Reduction Act to build a clean energy economy while benefiting communities historically left behind.

To date, the eight selected applicants have supported thousands of individuals, businesses and community organizations to access capital for climate and clean energy projects.

“When President Biden and I made the largest investment in our nation’s history to address the climate crisis and to build a clean energy economy, we made sure that every community would be able to participate and benefit,” said Vice President Kamala Harris. “The grantees announced today will help ensure that families, small businesses and community leaders have access to the capital they need to make climate and clean energy projects a reality in their neighborhoods.”

Together, the eight selected applicants have committed to delivering on the three objectives of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund: reducing climate and air pollution; delivering benefits to communities, especially low-income and disadvantaged communities; and mobilizing financing and private capital. As part of this collective effort, selected applicants have committed to:

• Fund projects that will reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions by up to 40 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year — equivalent to the emissions of nearly 9 million typical passenger vehicles — making a significant contribution to the President’s climate goals of reducing emissions 50 to 52 percent below 2005 levels in 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by no later than 2050.
• Dedicate over $14 billion toward low-income and disadvantaged communities, including over $4 billion for rural communities as well as almost $1.5 billion for Tribal communities — ensuring that program benefits flow to the communities most in need and advance the President’s Justice40 Initiative.
• Achieve a private capital mobilization ratio of nearly 7 times, with every dollar in grant funds leveraged for almost seven dollars in private funds over the next seven years — turning $20 billion of public funds into $150 billion of public and private investment to maximize the impact of public funds.

These commitments have been taken or derived from the application packages that selected applicants submitted to EPA and adjusted for the amount of funding received. Moving forward, EPA will work with selected applicants to revise their application packages into workplans that reflect formal commitments through the award agreements.

Selected Applicant Information

The eight selected applicants across the National Clean Investment Fund and Clean Communities Investment Accelerator will create a first-of-its-kind national clean financing network that will finance climate and clean energy projects, especially in low-income and disadvantaged communities.

National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF) Selectees

Under the $14 billion National Clean Investment Fund, the three selected applicants will establish national clean financing institutions that deliver accessible, affordable financing for clean technology projects nationwide, partnering with private-sector investors, developers, community organizations and others to deploy projects, mobilize private capital at scale and enable millions of Americans to benefit from the program through energy bill savings, cleaner air, job creation and more.

All three selected applicants surpassed the program requirement of dedicating a minimum of 40% of capital to low-income and disadvantaged communities. The three selected applicants are:

1. Climate United Fund ($6.97 billion award), a nonprofit formed by Calvert Impact to partner with two U.S. Treasury-certified Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), Self-Help Ventures Fund and Community Preservation Corporation. Together, these three nonprofit financial institutions bring a decades-long track record of successfully raising and deploying $30 billion in capital with a focus on low-income and disadvantaged communities. Climate United Fund’s program will focus on investing in harder-to-reach market segments like consumers, small businesses, small farms, community facilities and schools — with at least 60% of its investments in low-income and disadvantaged communities, 20% in rural communities and 10% in Tribal communities.
2. Coalition for Green Capital ($5 billion award), a nonprofit with almost 15 years of experience helping establish and work with dozens of state, local, and nonprofit green banks that have already catalyzed $20 billion into qualified projects—and that have a pipeline of $30 billion of demand for green bank capital that could be coupled with more than twice that in private investment. The Coalition for Green Capital’s program will have particular emphasis on public-private investing and will leverage the existing and growing national network of green banks as a key distribution channel for investment — with at least 50% of investments in low-income and disadvantaged communities.
3. Power Forward Communities ($2 billion award), a nonprofit coalition formed by five of the country’s most trusted housing, climate and community investment groups that is dedicated to decarbonizing and transforming American housing to save homeowners and renters money, reinvest in communities and tackle the climate crisis. The coalition members — Enterprise Community Partners, LISC (Local Initiatives Support Corporation), Rewiring America, Habitat for Humanity and United Way — will draw on their decades of experience, which includes deploying over $100 billion in community-based initiatives and investments, to build and lead a national financing program providing customized and affordable solutions for single-family and multi-family housing owners and developers — with at least 75% of investments in low-income and disadvantaged communities.

Clean Communities Investment Accelerator (CCIA) Selectees

Under the $6 billion Clean Communities Investment Accelerator, the five selected applicants will establish hubs that provide funding and technical assistance to community lenders working in low-income and disadvantaged communities, providing an immediate pathway to deploy projects in those communities while also building capacity of hundreds of community lenders to finance projects for years. Each of the selectees will provide capitalization funding (typically up to $10 million per community lender), technical assistance subawards (typically up to $1 million per community lender) and technical assistance services so that community lenders can provide financial assistance to deploy distributed energy, net-zero buildings, and zero-emissions transportation projects where they are needed most. 100% of capital under the CCIA is dedicated to low-income and disadvantaged communities.

The five selected applicants are:

1. Opportunity Finance Network ($2.29 billion award), a ~40-year-old nonprofit CDFI Intermediary that provides capital and capacity building for a national network of 400+ community lenders—predominantly U.S. Treasury-certified CDFI Loan Funds — which collectively hold $42 billion in assets and serve all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and several U.S. territories.
2. Inclusiv ($1.87 billion award), a ~50-year-old nonprofit CDFI Intermediary that provides capital and capacity building for a national network of 900+ mission-driven, regulated credit unions — which include CDFIs and financial cooperativas in Puerto Rico — that collectively manage $330 billion in assets and serve 23 million individuals across the country.
3. Justice Climate Fund ($940 million award), a purpose-built nonprofit supported by an existing ecosystem of coalition members, a national network of more than 1,200 community lenders, and ImpactAssets — an experienced nonprofit with $3 billion under management — to provide responsible, clean energy-focused capital and capacity building to community lenders across the country.
4. Appalachian Community Capital ($500 million award), a nonprofit CDFI with a decade of experience working with community lenders in Appalachian communities, which is launching the Green Bank for Rural America to deliver clean capital and capacity building assistance to hundreds of community lenders working in coal, energy, underserved rural and Tribal communities across the United States.
5. Native CDFI Network ($400 million award), a nonprofit that serves as national voice and advocate for the 60+ U.S. Treasury-certified Native CDFIs, which have a presence in 27 states across rural reservation communities as well as urban communities and have a mission to address capital access challenges in Native communities.

EPA anticipates that awards to the selected applicants will be finalized by July 2024 and that projects will be funded by the selected applicants and their partners shortly thereafter. Note that all of the selections are contingent on the resolution of all administrative disputes related to the competitions. Review frequently asked questions about the selection announcement, including the awards process.

News Source : EPA