Banking With A Purpose
You may know that the Connecticut Green Bank is making clean energy more affordable through their low-cost loans and lending programs. You may even know that they were the nation’s first Green Bank, founded in 2011 to accelerate the transition from dirty to clean energy. You may have even read our last blog on how they’re revolutionizing green finance. But did you know that the Connecticut Green Bank is responsible for creating nearly 3,000 jobs a year in the state of Connecticut? Today, we’re going to explore their efforts to develop the workforce of tomorrow and support those leading the implementation of clean energy.
C-Pace Loans
The Connecticut Green Bank supports economic growth and development by providing low-cost loans to residents for solar and energy efficiency upgrades, but also supports the local workforce through its Commercial Property Access Clean Energy Program (C-PACE). C-PACE increases accessibility of clean energy for building owners by allowing them to pay for their green improvements over time through a voluntary benefit assessment. Contractors who offer C-PACE as part of their services are connected to customers through the Green Bank and are therefore able to increase their pipeline substantially, as C-PACE expands the overall market of green construction work by decreasing the financial barriers to build or upgrade. C-PACE is available to building owners of all types – commercial, industrial, agricultural, nonprofits and multifamily.
Job Creation
Working with the Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) has allowed the Connecticut Green Bank to understand their impact on statewide job growth. An additional partnership with Navigant Consulting helped the Connecticut Green Bank build upon earlier studies to understand the impact of their investments in green energy on local jobs, reflected in job-years created. Job-years are a simple unit in economic development, representing the number of full-time jobs created for the period of a single year. For example, if an investment created five full-time jobs for a year, that would be equivalent to 5 job-years. Through their partnerships with DECD and Navigant, the Connecticut Green Bank was able to determine the growth of the renewable energy and energy efficiency market within the state and understand its own impact by calculating their proportion of the total investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency. This was then broken down to specific industry verticals for each million-dollar investment, which allows a clear picture of impact across the wider renewables and efficiency sector. This is represented below in Figure 1.
The clean energy revolution is about so much more than its environmental impact. While the priority is to reduce emissions and prevent the further deterioration of our planet and its ecosystems, there must be a similar swell in social growth to accommodate the implementation of technology and systems. Investments in green technologies and upgrades allows for a workforce of tomorrow to be trained, and the Connecticut Green Bank is leading the charge for renewable energy and energy efficiency. Learn more and invest in the Connecticut Green Bank on the Raise Green Marketplace.
Source: (“Economic Development Overview,” 2017)
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