Testimony
of
Matthias Paustian
Sierra Club Washington DC Chapter
on the
DC Green Finance Authority (Green Bank)
Oversight Hearing
Committee on Transportation and the Environment
February 22, 2021
Councilmember Cheh, thank you for the opportunity to provide comment at this hearing. My name is Matthias Paustian, and I am speaking on behalf of the Sierra Club DC Chapter today. The Sierra Club strongly supports the work of the DC Green Finance Authority and its focus on advancing sustainability, inclusive prosperity and a clean economy. We also support the Green Bank’s focus on these four sectors: transportation electrification, solar energy, building decarbonization, and stormwater abatement.
The Sierra Club views the Green Bank as an essential tool for achieving DC’s commitment to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. We also recognize and appreciate that DC is among the first jurisdictions to establish such an investment tool for low-carbon technologies and note that there is great opportunity for its benefits to be realized across the District in the years to come.
We strongly support the Green Bank’s ambition to be a force for equity and inclusiveness in the District as it pursues transformative decarbonizing change. Its focus on expanding access for DC residents to the benefits of a clean economy, along with its ambition to be engaged with a range of community institutions – beyond just banks and project developers – are both critically important commitments. While this commitment to equity may result in lower financial returns to the bank, it will bring valuable returns to the District by generating local jobs, improving public health, and facilitating better environmental stewardship.
Achieving the District’s commitment of becoming carbon neutral by 2050, however, will be impossible if the Green Bank, or any other public entity, puts its support behind infrastructure that will continue to burn fossil fuels for the decades to come. Mayor Bowser has committed DC to carbon neutrality, and her Clean Energy DC plan states that the District must stop burning fossil fuels. The Green Bank’s efforts must not be in conflict with that basic truth, even in the name of energy efficiency. Continued investment in new gas-burning appliances or gas connections for buildings locks the District into a long-term, structural dependency on more, rather than less, fossil fuel usage between now and 2050. These are emissions we cannot afford in our time-limited battle against climate change. Even private financial institutions are increasingly wary of financial liabilities when it comes to funding fossil fuel projects, and we believe DC’s Green Bank should be on the cutting edge of the clean energy transition, not hinder it.
Despite what its industry-preferred name may convey, there is nothing green about methane gas usage. In fact, since methane leakage occurs during the extraction, transmission and distribution of gas, it is not much better than coal in terms of its climate impact. Yet the Green Bank has not committed to exclude financing of projects involving methane gas in the District. The Sierra Club calls on the DC Green Bank to set an official policy that it will not finance any projects involving on site combustion of fossil fuels. Apart from the climate benefits, there would be benefits to the health of occupants in the homes as it has been shown that combustion of methane gas in kitchens can lead to increases in asthma and other health problems. Asthma is a problem that disproportionately affects low income households, and DC should not finance dirty fuels in those households.
The time to end support for methane gas is now. In its Carbon Free DC roadmap outlining DC’s path to carbon neutrality over time, the Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE) rightly notes that by 2040, 70 percent of District homes should be all electric. Changing fuel sources in homes is a very slow process, and the gas boilers and furnaces that may receive funding from the Green Bank in coming years will likely still be in place in 2040 and beyond.
To hold this institution accountable to its mission of funding technologies that will help DC mitigate climate change, we ask that the Green Bank be required to be as transparent as possible in reporting out its investment portfolio to the public. It is crucial that District taxpayers and public stakeholders are able to see projects funded, where they are located, and who owns them. As a “Green” bank, additional details on technologies installed and emissions avoided should be required.
We urge the Green Bank’s leadership, this committee, and the leadership of other entities such as DOEE and the DC Sustainable Energy Utility to immediately end subsidies of gas-burning appliances or gas-powered HVAC systems. As the Green Bank pursues its focus on the four sectors named earlier, we urge that it view the building energy efficiency sector as a place where it must be as transformative in spurring the transition off fossil fuels as it intends to be in its work on transportation electrification and solar energy.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify, and thank you for your leadership on these important issues.