Can I Sign North Carolina Banking PPT

Can i industry sign banking north carolina ppt now

[Music] welcome everybody thank you for joining us today um and just to make sure you are in the right place um this is a webinar on how a green bank can drive the north carolina clean energy economy uh we'll be kind of talking a little bit about a report that we just put out but also about some additional opportunities that are coming up i am jen weiss from the nicholas institute and in just a few minutes i will introduce the rest of my team but before we did that um just wanted to give you a few housekeeping items um this webinar is being recorded as you can see and we will be sharing the recording after the um the webinar we will also share the slides with you so we will send those out and also have them available on our website there are an awful lot of people on this webinar so we're going to mute all of your lines but please please that we really encourage your questions please use the chat box for your questions throughout the webinar and we've reserved some time at the end to have a robust discussion a q a discussion at the end so thank you again for joining us we're really looking forward to sharing our analysis with you and to share the opportunities for a green bank in north carolina and at the end we will share some exciting news there we go first the agenda um very quickly we want to um do a welcome and introduction from sushma mazemore from department of environmental quality um then we're going to do a little green bank 101 for those of you that might not be familiar with what a green bank is we wanted to give you a little background on what they are and what they can do then we'll dive right into north carolina opportunities for green bank and talk a little bit about some ideas on capitalization methods and perhaps the federal clean energy and sustainability accelerator that's in the works and then we'll talk about steps forward ending with a q a so um here's my team and i have to say um this is these two have been so fabulous to work with if you're not familiar with the coalition for green capital um they're a non-profit organization that's focused on accelerating the growth of clean energy markets through the creation of green banks and they've set up quite a few which they're going to tell you all about but i am just honored um to to work with them to learn from them as we've put together this project and we've dived into the um into the green bank and opportunities in north carolina so so hannah and jill thank you very much for being being with me yes as part of this uh this adventure i am jen weiss i'm a senior policy associate on the climate and energy team at duke duke university's nicholas institute for those of you that don't know about us we are part of duke university and we work with decision makers um to create timely effective economically practical solutions um to to questions to things that are coming up and certainly the financing of clean energy is something that comes up quite a bit so i'm excited today to talk a little bit more about some of those opportunities but nah but first before we do that um i wanted to welcome someone who needs absolutely no introduction i'm sure you all know her uh already um she as many of you know ashma is is the driving force behind many of the clean energy things that are going on in the state right now especially the clean energy plan which she was the mastermind behind so we are really thrilled to have her with us today to be welcoming you to this webinar for those of you that don't know her she is the deputy assistant secretary and the state energy director at the north carolina department of department of environmental quality and social thank you so much for for joining us today thanks jen can you hear me okay perfectly okay good hi uh thank you jen and welcome everybody this is really exciting me per for me personally as well as all of us who's been he's been working so hard for the last couple of years uh to advance north carolina's position in in the nation um i remember when i first started working on yo 80 when the first call i had uh was with ray collins and i talked with the the new york green banks folks and back then our conversations were so elementary and so at the at the infancy level but i feel like uh we've grown a lot we understood where the need is and it's exciting to see where things are headed with jen's leadership so i'm going to give a sort of like from my perspective you know why such a fund is so needed and a necessary uh step forward for north carolina as you all know the clean energy plan was launched in october 2019 as a response to governor cooper's directive to deq on executive order 80. it was a plan built out of a consensus process through a stakeholder engagement listening to all of you listening to many people across the state on what their vision for 21st century energy system looks like and all towards combating climate change and building a more prosperous clean energy economy for our state so as a result of that engagement we set out three overarching goals this particular initiative that you're going to hear about today is uh is it will position us to achieve at least two of those goals and that is to reduce our electricity city electric power sector greenhouse gas emissions by 70 by 2030 and attain carbon neutrality by 2050. it will also help us accelerate clean energy innovation and development and in order to deploy these resources and opportunities that creates a more of an economic opportunity for all the state including our rural and urban areas the clean energy plan as you saw there were six categories and within each category there are recommendations there were total 45 or so recommendations and about 80 action items the category called clean energy deployment and economic development contained a recommendation called enabling customers to choose clean energy and increasing customer access to clean energy and there were a variety of recommendations under that topic but particularly one called under f3 was to develop a green energy bank or a statewide clean energy fund that would catalyze the development and expand clean energy markets and the vision behind that was connecting private capital with project developers and project customers both at the state level local level in the private and public sector and we also envision that such a recommendation would involve and require leadership from the governor's office governor himself from from academia and local government and i'm excited to hear all of that come to fruition in less than a year we have a lot more work to do but they jen and her team have basically carried out this recommendation f3 and i'm really looking forward to it because already we have identified so many places uh where uh this kind of funding mechanism is is right for uh for for uh for action and some of the examples are you know um using this capital dollars to uh for projects in areas and markets that currently are not attractive or not not even an option for for north carolinians uh it can decipher simultaneously spur new businesses and projects um that uh would help our local economy but bring renewable energy and energy efficiency options uh to those that it might not be available um it can be used as a financing mechanism for building out our electric vehicle infrastructure as well as other means for reducing emissions and building energy resiliency in both public and private building sector but most of all i see this as an opportunity to particularly serve the need in rural and poorer communities that may otherwise lack access to the necessary capital so in conclusion i think this clean energy fund project and and all that offers can support our vision for a cleaner greener and more sustainable north carolina particularly related to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and building a more resilient and a clean uh economy for our state thanks jen fantastic thank you so much sushma for for just being visionary and and behind us the whole way and supporting us this is this is incredible um so next up i want to hannah is going to talk to you through a little bit of green bank 101 take it away hannah awesome um so before we dive into the opportunities and impacts that sushma mentioned on reducing emissions and creating jobs and other positive impacts we'll first do just a quick review on what green banks are so green banks are essentially clean energy investment funds they use financial tools to increase sustainable investment they bring together commercial public and mission-driven capital in order to make financial products that increase investment and the key part here is that the capital is mission driven which allows those green banks to offer financing often at lower rates or longer terms than projects would otherwise be able to find so this creates additionality in the market expanding investment to projects that otherwise wouldn't make it to development um alongside that investment green banks also provide technical expertise and they work with local partners to break down barriers and connect projects with capital so as we'll see in upcoming slides not all barriers are a lack of access to capital but rather business problems that require technical assistance to find those solutions beyond all this green banks use methods that catalyze greater overall investment meaning that they use their mission-driven capital to draw in more private investment to expand the clean energy market overall and jenna if you could click to the next slide so this map reflects a decade's worth of experience collectively these 15 green banks have driven over 5 billion of investment and as you can see in the top left hand corner with approximately three dollars of private capital flowing into each project for every one dollar of green bank uh capital used uh next slide so green banks are necessary because there are many many barriers to clean energy deployment which as i mentioned are not just a lack of access to capital but also technical assistance and business problems um were the necessity of increasing project demand so to pick out a few of these some barriers include over in the top right perceived credit risk for low and moderate income households due to a lack of credit history which then blocks these households from accessing commercial loans despite the fact that low income communities often have disproportionately high energy costs and are disproportionately affected by harmful emissions yet they are often the last to access the benefits and savings from clean energy another barrier is small projects not providing sufficient scale to attract private investment which keeps those commercial and residential owners from saving on their energy bill and finally a general barrier is that off-the-shelf financing terms often don't match the project lifetime um which can then result in negative cash flow due to the debt rate or term being mismatched jenna if you would click the next slide so these problems can be solved by a green bank who is dedicated to knocking down barriers for faster and cheaper clean energy market growth with a focus specifically on equitable deployment so some financing solutions include over on the the left-hand side using the green bank's mission-driven capital to offer lower rates or longer terms to better match a project's cash flows um or using alternative underwriting criteria or credit enhancements to address households with limited credit history in order to then bring clean energy benefits to low and moderate income communities or a financing solution for small projects is for a green bank to standardize aggregate and warehouse those projects so essentially those projects can be bundled and then sold into the private market which allows small commercial or residential owners to access the clean energy savings that they need and then over on the right side some market creation strategies to overcome barriers can include acting as a first mover to spark deals that require collective action or partnering with businesses to create and train a massive new clean energy workforce or employing innovative structures like cpace commercial property assessed clean energy and on bill finance products to expand access so i know we ran through those quickly but this just covers what a green bank is and what kinds of products might be created so i'll hand it back to jen so that we can talk through some of the specifics of the opportunities and impact a green bank could have in north carolina wonderful thank you hannah so now that we're all up to speed with what a green bank is and what it can do i wanted to talk a little bit about our process as sushma mentioned the green bank was a recommendation in the north carolina clean energy plan it was also a recommendation in two other parallel processes going on at the same time in 2019 the energy efficiency roadmap as well as the department of transportation's zero emission vehicle plan and so from those three stakeholder driven um processes we really felt it was a good time for us to dig into what a green bank could look like for north carolina so um in the fall of 2019 the nicholas institute partnered with a coalition for green capital to do a stakeholder engagement process to really understand what these barriers are hannah put a whole bunch out there and we wanted to understand were these the barriers that north carolina was seeing were there other barriers that there might be here why were certain types of clean energy and energy efficiency projects not being funded where are those gaps and so we did a really robust stakeholder engagement process to understand that and then from there we came up with some green bank solutions that we felt would be opportunities for north carolina to take advantage of to overcome some of these barriers and to really drive the clean energy market and then last month in october we published the report which is available on our website and also i can send it out if you have not seen it but it is really an outline of what these opportunities look like and what our path forward is to make a green bank successful in north carolina so quickly i wanted to talk about a couple of the roles that we found for green banks in north carolina and this is a lot based on the barriers that we heard when we talked to the stakeholders as well as some of the barriers that hannah just outlined we found four basic roles um and i'm not going to go through them in too much detail but but really we wanted you to know that the green bank doesn't play just one financing role it can play multiple types of roles and so one of the roles that we heard loud and clear was this role of a connector um and this could be for maybe something that's a first of kind transaction maybe a new technology or it could even be for maybe where there's a lack of stack capac staff capacity to be doing some financing and so a green bank can offer technical assistance should kind of be a matchmaker between the financing that's available and um the the people that need it and so one of the roles we really want to focus in on for north carolina is this connector role a second role goes back to that perceived project risk we feel the green bank can play a large role in a risk mitigator in north carolina by offering credit enhancements whether that's a loan loss reserve or it's an interest rate buy down just something to make um the more traditional lenders private investors um reduce have a feeling of reduced project risk and invest more into the clean energy markets a third role is a direct lender maybe where there are marginal economics that is not attracting the capital in the first place and in these cases we can be a co-investor maybe taking a junior position or a senior position to improve the overall economics of the project and make it attractive and then finally the last role as hannah was saying we could play an aggregator or a warehousing role take projects that are smaller maybe weatherization residential weatherization projects and build them but maybe they have lower efficiencies of scale and build them into a block or or scale them up so it makes sense for a private investor to invest in them did want to provide a couple of examples on these um these are ones that came irectly from our stakeholder engagement in the connector role we felt like we could um offer assistance for on bill tariff programs for electric cooperatives or municipal utilities really building out that functionality that we know can work across the state or perhaps it would be to support cities in developing their energy efficiency and clean energy projects this would be connecting them with the financing that's available to help them meet their specific goals in the risk may to get a role it could be something as easy as helping traditional lenders grow their own energy efficiency offerings maybe by offering one of those credit enhancements that i discussed or it could be expanding existing programs that are successful and do a great job in the market but maybe don't have the enough funding to do all of the great things they want to do and a good example is the north carolina housing finance agency who has a number of affordable housing programs that are very successful the green bank could help to expand those programs and and help them do even more in the direct lender role um we could offer energy efficiency lending and agriculture agriculture and you'll hear about it in just a second is one of the areas that we found a huge gap in financing um for and so we want to help to be that bridge to help get um the the farms the funding that they need or it could be to electrify transit and school bus fleets and we saw a huge opportunity for the electrification of buses and so the green bank could help to advance that and then finally in the bundler roll just a couple of examples could be a heat pump water heater program or other energy efficient residential equipment loans where we could just bundle a lot of them together and sell them on the secondary market rather than have me talk about all these i think it's better to have some of our outstanding stakeholders and so i'd like to invite these three wonderful people to just talk a little bit about the opportunities that they see from their perspective of how green bank could help i will quickly introduce them and then let them speak um ajila otho is the founder and ceo of enter wealth solutions amber weaver is a sustainability officer at the city of asheville and terry albrecht is the director of waste reduction partners thank you all three of you and we'll kick it off with a julo hi thank you so much jennifer um i just want to talk a little bit about the particular role that the clean energy fund could play specifically with the rural electric cooperatives in our state um as you know there are they are operating in 93 of the 100 counties in our state mostly rural many of which are persistently poor counties and because they are independent and governed by a board they're able to take on innovative projects and approaches but at the same time they're small and often have the capacity just enough capacity to carry out the core functions of their business which is to buy and sell electricity without being able to take on much more much more than that operationally or financially and so the clean energy fund could play a really critical role in helping these types of organizations to experiment and to potentially pivot to new lines of business and so support for those uh retail electric cooperatives as well as support for the statewide organization the electric cooperative membership uh the north carolina electric membership corporation excuse me as well as the national rural electric cooperative association is a really important connection role that the clean energy fund could play in helping retail cooperatives again to experiment with new strategies and so i'm looking forward to hopefully supporting some strategic partnerships with these organizations at the local level as well as the statewide entity in particular and um working to also elevate the stories of electric cooperatives that are already engaged in really innovative work like the roanoke electric cooperative out in northeastern north carolina that is um undertaking uh clean energy technology they're deploying solar and batteries uh storage projects they're also engaging in tariff on bill financing for uh beneficial electrification as well as for energy efficiency upgrades and so these are the kinds of things that i think that the clean energy fund could help to do particularly with rural electric cooperatives in our state fantastic and i 100 agree with you those are all really wonderful projects and thank you thank you for taking the lead on all of those um amber are you on the line she was calling on a phone so i may have to check on that terry terry why don't we run to you and then i will see if i can get amber's lineup muted sure uh thank you jen so jen asked me to speak a little about some of the work we do and the potential project opportunities so um i run a group called waste reduction partners it's a team of of retired engineers that are across the state and we actively do energy assessments across all non-residential sectors but i wanted to talk specifically about small business and ag and so since um about 2012 we work very closely with the usda and their rural energy for america program called reap to do energy assessments in the ag and small business sector all rural north carolina to help those entities identify energy efficiency projects as well as apply for some very limited grant funding that's available through usda so just um a little bit of sector size of north carolina we've got over a hundred thousand rural small businesses we have somewhere in the order of forty six thousand farms um so those numbers might be a few years old but so there's a there's a mass scale there um since 2015 um our group has done about 140 on-site energy assessments at small businesses and at these rural small business and ag sectors we've identified over 4.4 million dollars in annual energy project opportunities and yet those businesses really only received somewhere in the order of less than a half a million dollars of of usda funding to help get them there there's a matching grant that they can apply for so um in our estimation we have at least just out of that subset of 140 of the you know hundred thousand rural small businesses we we see there's at least 23 million dollars of energy project investment there that could be supported um that we make an estimation of so i think um you know a green bank is going to really help that whether it's through the assistance or you know direct loans or support of more marginal loans in general and those projects range across the map and ag it might be center pivot irrigation systems for farm or poultry house upgrades um it may be refrigeration or other more common commercial upgrades and hvac and lighting and those kinds of things so i think there's there's definitely a massive amount of opportunity especially in the rural areas served by co-ops and municipals where some of the more direct say duke energy you know investor-owned utility programs are not supporting projects in those areas great thanks terry yeah there really is a lot of opportunity in the agriculture sector that's exciting to be to be thinking about and and to help move forward thank you for all of your work on that we're gonna try amber again amber are you able to unmute yes i'm here hello yay thank you yes thank you so much for inviting a municipal perspective on the benefits of green banks the city of asheville office of sustainability has been working with jen weissen a couple of different ways over several years around green banks and through the environmental defense fund cities initiative there's been a collaborative of cities many i'm assuming jennifer that were part of the stakeholder group that have said and talked about what our needs are when it comes to both energy efficiency and renewable energy goals that some of our municipal operations have set out in addition to that a couple years ago buncombe county and the city of asheville worked on a 100 renewable energy road map and in both of these settings we continue to hear the need of having additional financing for again renewable energy low moderate income projects weatherization energy efficiency and what green banks will also help us do in in that area is focus on and actually hopefully potentially work on cpace property assessed clean energy program which is something that is across the nation but we just haven't quite been able to figure that out here in the state of north carolina some of those needs around having a central place such as a green bank to help us implement a program like cpace is the need to have that technical assistance that was described a bit earlier for both community members as well as our local municipal um communities to be able to lean on when it comes to like how do you want to deploy this where is the capital coming from you know in in for the city of asheville anyway you know we we are a smaller city i like to remind people that we're really only 90 um population of ninety thousand ninety two thousand so you know if you put that in perspective some of these other uh states and larger cities that have been able to accomplish a c-pace program you know it it we just don't have the capital and the expertise and the technical technical assistance addition additionally i think it's just important to have those programs available when we have community 100 renewable energy community-wide goals it's a big list for municipalities and i think having all the partners at the table is what's going to help us to see those ambitious goals and come to fruition something else that was mentioned but i also think is extremely important just to underscore is the need for weatherization and our city has has had grant through the urban sustainability directors network and the southeast sustainability directors network to help with with weatherization programs but the need the need is so vast and and i think to have a green bank and again the support of a green bank and someone to kind of help provide that technical assistance to municipalities to continue to to work and focus on energy efficiency and lmi communities is what's going to be really important and what um in a meaningful way right so like when i think about renewable energy goals i i think that many times we need to make them make that goal something that's applicable to everyone and when we talk to our bipart frontline communities that's a distant thought it's a distant thought so i think it's our goal to be able to help with help with weatherization and energy efficiency to move all of our communities forward towards this really large ambitious goal of renewable energy wonderful thank you amber and yeah thank you for all your leadership in that field you guys have been been driving that for quite some time and and we really do appreciate all your work um so thank you to the three of you and and and you know these are incredible opportunities that that julio amber and terry just outlined but there's many more and so you can see what a benefit a green bank or a clean energy fund is going to bring to our state in many different respects um quickly um you know i wanted to talk about kind of what our plan forward is um so we have set as a target for the north carolina clean energy fund um a hundred million dollar target if we if we get that amount in the fund we believe that we have the funds to stimulate the economy to help us get towards a just energy transition and help with greenhouse gas reductions and so it's really really important as we are thinking through our potential pipeline and what we want to invest in from the north carolina clean energy fund that we keep those three tenants in mind as you all know due to covid um north carolina lost a significant number of clean energy work jobs um i think as of july it was approximately 19 while some of that has come back it hasn't fully come back and so we believe based on what we've seen in other green banks that with this 100 million in seed capital north carolina could create 15 000 jobs in the first five years with no other state policy changes so can you imagine what it could do with some of these other things that the state is considering doing this is just with this is just on its own definitely definitely you know as we said green banks are mission-based um we want to have programs that are specifically focused on low-income and front-line communities um amber just talked about a lot of opportunities there julo talked about some as well there are a lot of opportunities for us to help these communities that maybe in the past haven't gotten the accessibility to financing that they need and then finally i would be remiss if i didn't say that a clean energy fund could help with emissions reductions as sushma outlined we've got some incredible goals in north carolina to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 and the green bank can play a significant role in helping to make that happen um so how do we move this forward how do we get this 100 million to start this this green bank i'm going to turn it over to jill now and she's going to talk a little bit about a couple of opportunities great thanks jen so hello everyone i'm jill bunting i'm the deputy director of the coalition for green capital for just hannah and i are just thrilled to be here talking to you all about the work that we've been doing with jen and and you all on the ground in north carolina and it's just been fantastic to to be in the state and working with you um so yeah so jen threw out that big number 100 million for a north carolina green bank which sort of begs the obvious question of where will that actually come from um and so what i can tell you is in our work around the country setting up green banks we've worked with states to identify kind of a broad range of funding options and that could include state budget appropriations sometimes that can include uh like greenhouse gas like reggie dollars things like that sometimes there's parts of philanthropy that will step in for a piece of that um so that's to say there's kind of a broad range of options for how a stake we make where to put together its initial source of seed capital the challenge with that is it's really hard to pull together uh funding kind of a piece meal manner and it's not just hard to get it done it's really really hard to get it done quickly there's really never enough money and there's never enough time um so one thing i wanted to highlight in this webinar is the thing about pathway for north carolina there's a new source of funding potentially available at the federal level which is um clean energy and sustainability accelerator this is a concept right now where the federal government would make a one-time um appropriation to a new nonprofit called the clean energy and sustainability accelerator that central entity would then be available to turn around and make money available to local green banks like in north carolina and that funding would cover both startup costs and also um capital for investments um as hannah described the stake remake would then marry that federal money with private sector investment that would increase the overall investment in clean energy in the state jan can you go to the next slide great so what kinds of projects are we talking about here sort of what's in in in the wheelhouse of the accelerator so there's seven broad sectors that are outlined in the legislation right now and that includes renewable energy buildings the grid transportation industry forestry and agriculture and resiliency and i think this sort of diversity of sectors is different from a lot of federal and state programs and that really reflects the fact that we can't solve climate change we can't um increase equitable access to energy but by just focusing on one thing we really need a sort of a portfolio approach and we can't realize the job the full job potential or deliver environmental justice without addressing industry or resiliency and so that's why the accelerator is authorized to finance activities across a broad range of sectors ensuring that every community can benefit great so we've talked a little about the um the importance of equity as as a sort of core 10 of what green banks do and that's absolutely at t e core of what the accelerator would do as well um the frontline communities have suffered dispersion harm from climate change and generally been afterthought for climate investment and related job and wealth creation um the accelerator will reverse this paradigm to really frontline job creation first um and right now the goal is to have the accelerator bring fence 40 of his investments to make sure that those funds flow to disadvantaged communities that create jobs and lower energy costs in those in those places so i think one obvious question here is why am i talking about something theoretical can we really get something done in divided government um and i want to just highlight a couple um green shoots that sort of make out somebody said cgc optimistic about something like this moving forward as we look in into the future in 2021 first i just point out that in the past congressional support has been massive and we expect this to be a priority in both next congress and next presidency um the senate bill that passed was sponsored by vice president-elect harris along with senators marky van hollen and blumenthal um the house bill was led by debbie gingle and in fact the house bill passed twice in 2020 alone um again this bill has already passed two times in six months that calls for a 35 billion dollar appropriation to the clean energy fund um it also has a support of house leadership um and it was included in the um time and crisis report as well in the senate democrats owned climate crisis report so this is not just a democratic issue though support extends sort of far beyond capitol hill you can see some of the names of the organizations that have signed letters endorsement over the summer and in fact over 100 organizations have now signed at this point and um it's not just then supported by folks in congress and sort of environmental groups on the ground we've done polling that finds close to seven and ten voters including majorities in both parties have supported the funding the national climate bank to create jobs um in general green banks have been an area bipartisan agreement in most of the the states that we've worked in and we think that there's a huge opening for something like this to move forward as part of a stimulus discussion in 2021. so in terms of the work that we're doing right now across the country there are stakeholders just like in north carolina working together to set up green banks to potentially receive funding from the source and they're talking to their officials and other folks in the state about what the accelerator could do for them if getting that kind of elevating those sorts of voices and those stories is going to be critical for for getting passage of something like this and it's something that you're interested in uh being part of please get in touch with us we'll have our contact information available at the end thanks very much great thanks jill yeah there's a lot of great opportunities i love to see the um the maps lighting up like that with all of the states that are interested in it um i will say though that we are ahead of the game i think i'm just going to pat ourselves on the back um so my big news um i wanted to talk about where are we now um so my big news is that we did file um with the state uh secretary of state's office of north carolina the articles of incorporation for a non-profit here in north carolina to be the north carolina clean energy fund so those have been filed and we are working on setting up a 501c3 nonprofit organization we have established a founding board of directors that will meet in december to approve bylaws nominate additional members board members and develop a business plan and i'll talk a little bit more about those board members in just a moment we are starting to gather support for the clean energy fund and the national clean energy accelerator that jill was just talking about from a broad group and we encourage you to to help us with that support if you have an interest in giving us a letter of support or joining a group with the letter of support please get in touch with us because we really want to build the excitement and the enthusiasm behind this we're starting to develop a pipeline of projects and to get them ready for when we do get the funding to move forward and again if you have ideas for projects um please get in touch with us we want to talk through the different project ideas that you have so that we can get some things ready to go and then finally we are doing fundraising in the event that the accelerator does not come to pass in the in the near future we will be working on other ways to fund this so this is going to move forward in some form um there may be different ways that we are going to fund it but we are working towards that and then finally we want to work on hiring a staff i'm probably an executive director and maybe an administrative support sometime in 2021 so here is our founding board you'll recognize a couple familiar faces on here actually probably all of them are familiar to some of you i wanted to first say how excited i am about this board um these are are three i'm gonna say three because one of them is me three uh creative smart and visionary leaders that i'm just really excited to be kicking off this adventure with ajulo who you have already met um melissa malcolm weber from the self-help credit union and tyler norris from cypress creek renewables um again i'm excited about starting this journey with them because i believe they are they are very visionary and are going to bring a lot of their expertise to the table and help us get down the right path with a clean energy fund but now i wanted to invite melissa who has kindly offered to talk a little bit about her role on the board um just to speak to all of you melissa thanks jen and thanks everybody for being here so when jen asked me to serve on the founding board i said yes in a heartbeat because the north carolina clean energy fund can help steal financing gaps that are preventing important work from getting done now when i think about the impact that a clean energy fund can have what's front of mind for me is the urgency of addressing energy disparities recent work from ac tripoli shows us that if you're a low and moderate income family or you're a person of color you're more likely to pay over six percent of your paycheck towards your home energy bill and during covid that power bill is also the link to your kid being able to participate in remote schooling so energy efficiency and health and safety investments in homes aren't charity they're crucial investments in the education of north carolina's future workforce investments in community health and they're even investments in the health of the electric grid and i bet all of you who are on this webinar also have ideas about needed financing solutions because anybody who's listening to this webinar has likely served on advisory panels attended workshops and really helped lay the groundwork for climate resilience in north carolina there's been so much effort over the years to find ways to extend clean energy and energy efficiency as the economic engines in this state and then to distribute those benefits equitably we are so lucky to have this really vibrant set of institutions that help build the clean energy and energy efficiency sector trade associations like insea and the north carolina building performance association advocacy groups from the mainstream to those who hold our feet to the fire university-based centers like the nicholas institute and the center for energy research at a t so i'm really honored to be in the esteemed company here on this founding board and working with ajula otho and tyler norris and jen weiss they're creative they're practical they're i'll say i'm personally inspired and we're going to give our very best for the people of north carolina wonderful see why she's on the board thank you we're so excited to have you on the board with us melissa and jillo and tyler um we're just really excited to get this this kicked off um so i'm gonna wrap this up by saying you know here are some of the steps forward um for the north carolina clean energy fund but we'll call it that i'm gonna switch over from calling it a green bank so this is the north carolina clean energy fund we have set up the board we are going to start working on the pipeline of projects but we need your support as melissa just said so many of you are so actively involved in the state in the clean energy sector in the energy efficiency sector in the finance sectors academic sectors we would love your support through letters of interest or pipeline examples if you have examples of projects that you think are ready for funds once we have them please please reach out to us we are going to continue to develop the institution itself the nonprofit and its business plan but we look forward to hearing more from all of you i'm going to open it up now for questions please feel free to put them into the chat but again reach out to me reach out to any of the board members reach out to coalition for green capital if you have any any ideas any questions about how this can help north carolina um i want to thank again my team jill bunting and and hannah beinecke they've just been incredible um it's been wonderful to work with it and thank you to all of the stakeholders that have been involved so far and thank you to all of you for joining the webinar today it shows your interest and there's a tremendous number of people on the line today and that just really is incredible so thank you for joining us today and let's take some questions all right let's see we've got there was a question on the volkswagen lawsuit um but i think we could take that one offline maple i think um there's a little bit of information that we can provide on the on vw itself but the the point of the green bank is one of the things that we can think about doing is um being an addition to the vw settlement so if the vw settlement were to be able to fund um part of a new electric school bus for example maybe the green bank could help with that additional part so that's that co-investment type of idea that we'd be looking to do um had a resonation resonating yes for weatherization yes definitely weatherization is going to be a part of the what the green bank does um there's a question about ben yes i'm so sorry to interrupt you i i'm on the phone so i don't know i don't know uh about you know when to take a turn um so amber weaver from the city of asheville and i think that there would be many cities that want to write a letter of support or participate in any way shape or form how would you envision us doing that that would be most beneficial to this cause jill do you want to take that one yeah sure so i think there's kind of two options i think the first one probably makes the most sense is if you're a city that's interested in this why don't you um just shoot us a note after this and we can talk to you about whether it makes sense for you to to write one um as a standalone or we can sort of bring a group of cities together to sign off on one in some of the states that we're working on we've kind of taken both approaches and some people have customized it more and some people have um sort of signed on as a bigger growth both are great options so yeah let's just take that offline but i would just say that kind of demonstrate interest on the ground is just hugely helpful for the institution and yeah i'm looking forward to talking about more yeah thanks jill and thanks for the question amber that's that was a great question we um i'm hoping there's going to be broad support but we can certainly do it in different in different ways um and let's talk those through that's that's definitely interesting to us um i want to thank mac for um putting a link to the uh green bank report in there i did not do that so thank you mac for putting that into the chat box for anybody that's interested um there was a question about whether there is a mechanism for a non-north carolina small business to apply for for green bank funds to have north carolina academia peer review a clean energy innovation so i think what joseph is asking is um is there maybe funding available to connect new innovations with academia and i don't know have you seen that happen jill or hannah in the past yeah so typically the green banks sort of work on the commercialization end of the clean energy development process so they're sort of less involved in um and technologies that are just kind of getting off the ground or in the pilot stage and they're more looking at how you can sort of take things that have already been proven in that um in that part of the development pipeline and how you get them to scale um it's not it's come up in a couple other states that we've worked in colorado there's a lot of discussion about this for example um and they haven't yet designed sort of a program that focuses on innovation but if it was sort of a like locus of interest in a particular state i think it could it could work well with the green bank model depending on what kind of needs are on the ground okay thanks jim um mac asks the question about the powerpoint being sent to the registry registrant yes i will send out the powerpoint as well as a link to the recording um please feel free to share it with anyone that was unable to make the call today and if they are interested in getting in touch with us about um some support please have them do that as well sophie has a question about whether a green bank would be able to help finance low to moderate income solar projects definitely um jill or hannah you want to talk about any examples you've seen yeah i would mention um just the experience that the connecticut green bank has had in this market they really pioneered the sort of green bank interventions in the lmi solar market and it's not an accident that because of their work connecticut's a beyond parody state and solar and by that i mean that there's more penetration of solar for low and moderate income households than there isn't high income households and that's largely because they sort of created a suite of products that um work directly on the on the low and low and moderate income uh solar installations um but across the board there are green banks that are working on low and moderate income solar in maryland there's a green bank called the climate access fund which is dedicated to increasing access to community solar projects as part of the state's um commitment to broadening that market down in florida there's an organization called self which is also focused on putting low and moderate income solar up and sort of combine that with some roof repair motherization some sort of innovative program um which is also sort of examples all over the country and i think it could be a great fit for the north carolina market yeah great sophie if you have ideas please follow them our way we'd love to talk to you more about them um i did get a question um sent to me that was um i think it was just sent to me so i'll read it it's would you require the affordable housing that you fund to be all electric um and i i mean i don't think that is necessarily something that we would require i think as the the board puts together our business plan and our criteria for what types of projects to select we'll be considering that um but certainly aren't ruling out anything at this point um that is all the questions i see does anybody on the phone have a question or anybody want to ask a question um live maybe on that point about technology screens i just add that usually in green banks we see fewer um like negative screens same things that they say they won't do and more sort of positive screens so areas of focus um and the purpose of that is to keep the pipeline fairly broad and open-ended to stakeholders and while agreement sort of articulates what its priorities are to the market and sort of uses the screening process in that way yep really really good point i do have a question from brian about is another state bank is there another state bank that stands out as a close match to what you envisioned for north carolina yeah and there are so there are several remakes h ve been created as non-profits that are actually also called blank clean energy funds so i think north carolina is in good company there um i pointed out to the examples of nevada and colorado and particularly colorado the colorado clean energy fund was started as a non-profit but it's sort of connected to the priorities of the energy office there and into government um has it has a board that looks very similar to the florida north carolina um they've really focused on they have an active sea pace market in the state which is different than north carolina um but they've really focused on this gap and see pace where they're sort of smaller projects that aren't getting funded by some of the larger c-pace developers um so that's been their first product line and as we sort of heard from stakeholders in north carolina it sounds like a similar experience of focusing on small and mid-sized projects might be a good fit for something um for the state as well oops sorry did not mean to do that i'm sorry so um there was a question from sushma about regarding the accelerator what is the anticipated amount of steed fund expected for north carolina or would it be formula based if you know yeah great question so this is all being um will be figured out in the final legislative details i can tell you sort of some of the concepts that are being talked about right now and the short answer is yes it would the idea is that it would be something um there'd be a percentage of the overall money that's given to the accelerator that be allocated to the states something like sixty percent of the overall money and then within that sixty percent um it would be distributed to the states in a formula basis probably based on population is the going theory right now though that might change a little bit all right thank you and then daniel has a question about specifically about um financing commercial public sector multi-family energy efficiency what is the mechanism to be paid back espc style not sure what you meant on this should mean energy savings corporation style or monthly fixed payments um so i'll start that one jill and hannah um you can you can chime in you know i think that's that's up for consideration right we have not right now figured out exactly how these programs are going to run and how they're going to be paid back i will say that they are going to be designed to be sustainable so um we are not giving out grants we are we are actually lending and we expect to make this green bank sustainable for the long run jill anything you want to add no that's great um let's see so um a lot of things about clean yay clean um dion suggests that maybe a letter from a broader cities initiative um and we can uh address one of the key priorities that's coming out of the city's initiative and how the green bank can help which is a great idea dionne cassie has a question about do you have a list of criteria that would be helpful in a letter of support from a municipality or a county is there a deadline for providing that um but something that orange county can probably provide but a little more guidance would be helpful yeah that makes a lot of sense so we have some model language that we can share with folks after this that other cities and municipalities have used and that should be a good starting point for crafting that for folks yeah and what i can do is as we start to get these templates and models together we can put them on our website and i'm sure coalition for green capital will put it on there so that you will have access to them and you'll you all will be able to use them what other states in the south have moved forward on a green bank or are in the same phase of development as we are in north carolina yeah i think north carolina as jen said is a little bit ahead of the curve in the south and developing the green bay um the other one the south that comes to mind is um self which i mentioned down in florida they've been in business i think for going on eight years now um and they're sort of uh nascent green bank efforts and some other places uh but but north carolina is leading the way at least in the southeast so far yes let's do this north carolina we got this um i see a lot of thanks a lot of um of clapping for the board and um yeah laura i will i will put together some sort of sharing site for people to to access um any other questions or jill and hannah is there anything that we've missed that you want to add not for me i mean we're just so excited about the energy enthusiasm that's coming out of north carolina right now from um government to the the new board to you all for attending this it's just it's really sort of a unique time and opportunity for the state and we're just happy to be along for the ride yeah i i would just echo that and even just seeing how many people are on the line now and how many people have uh taken part in the stakeholder process and london their support and their voices to this report and and to us moving forward has been really exciting to see so thank you all so much for for your voices and for your support as well fantastic well with that i am actually going to wrap it up i think but as i said you know our number our names and our emails are right there please reach out to us please share your ideas please share your um your letters of interest please share your pipeline projects thank you all for joining us today and for your enthusiasm about the clean energy fund and we're really really looking forward to making this happen here in north carolina have a great afternoon