Gov. Ned Lamont wants to expand the role of the Connecticut Green Bank to include addressing climate change adaptation through a bill he proposed as one of his 2021 legislative priorities.
The Act Concerning Climate Change Adaptation (House Bill 6441) would build on the success of the green bank, according to Rebecca French, director of the office of climate planning for the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
“We want to bring that success to implementing environmental infrastructure in the state,” French said during a green bank-hosted webinar last week on environmental finance.
Upon its creation in 2011, the Connecticut Green Bank had a mandate to flip the government-subsidized approach to clean energy investments by working with private sector entities on long-term project financing.
Since its inception, the quasi-public entity and its private investment partnerships have yielded $1.94 billion for clean energy projects across the state. Projects through FY 2020 show that for every $1 of public funds committed by the green bank, an additional $6.60 in private investment is added to Connecticut’s economy.
Under the proposed bill, the green bank would be authorized to make investments in climate adaptation and resilience infrastructure in addition to water, waste and recycling, agriculture, land conservation and environmental markets with carbon offsets. It would be allowed to use its bonding authority and seek additional grant funding to invest in and stimulate more private investment.
Wayne Cobleigh, vice president for client services for GZA GeoEnvironmental, said public and private grant funding “is the way most people have been financing [climate] resilience.”
Local governments, however, do not have the “financial wherewithal” to make a difference in building climate resilience, Joyce Coffee, president of Climate Resilience Consulting, said, adding that there is “a lot of activity” in Connecticut to enable local funding for environmental infrastructure.
“State grants and loans and authorization of municipal stormwater authorities, enabling municipalities to adopt buyers’ conveyance fees, adding flood prevention and climate resilience to erosion control boards and expanding Green Bank functions are all crucial to ensuring that more funding and finance flows toward climate change action including towards climate change resilience,” Coffee said.
The Connecticut Green Bank could emulate the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank (RIIB) if the bill becomes law, according to Jeff Diehl, RIIB CEO and executive director. RIIB invests in infrastructure programs focused on clean water, roads and bridges, brownfield remediation, energy efficiency and renewable energy projects for municipalities, quasi-state agencies, commercial and residential property owners.
“We look through all of this within a lens of climate resilience,” Diehl said. “We’ve invested over $2 billion into these sectors here in Rhode Island — about two-thirds private sector capital that we’ve mobilized, and the rest is our capital.”
Diehl said RIIB specializes in “creative capital solutions.”
“We understand one size doesn’t fit all, but we look to tailor a solution across all of our programs because we are fairly broad in our authorities and the access to capital that we have to fit the problems,” Diehl said. “We’ve joined forces with other entities, nonprofits and others to craft holistic solutions, which serve both the technical advisory and capital needs of our communities.”
Coffee said that jobs, public health, climate resilience and social equity are the “fundamentals” that private investors look at first when considering an environmental finance project. For example, public and private housing developers might seek support to build better onsite energy security, she said.
“Distributed generation seems to be something that a lot of housing developers are now willing to pay for,” Coffee said.
The bill is currently before the Joint Committee on Environment, which held a public hearing for the bill on March 8.