Testimony of
Scott Williamson, Sierra Club DC Chapter Clean Energy Committee
Before the Transportation and the Environment Committee
At the Green Finance Authority (Green Bank) Performance Oversight Hearing
January 25, 2022
Councilmember Cheh, thank you for the opportunity to testify at this performance oversight hearing on the DC Green Finance Authority. My name is Scott Williamson, and I am a member of the Sierra Club DC Chapter’s Clean Energy Committee. The Sierra Club is the nation’s oldest, largest and most influential environmental advocacy group. We have chapters in all 50 states, and the DC Chapter has 3,000 dues-paying members.
The Sierra Club remains strongly in support of the Green Finance Authority’s mission to drive private investment in clean, efficient and green infrastructure projects in the District. We are also heartened to see the Green Bank filling positions, building partnerships, and expanding lending activity. In addition, the Green Bank’s commitment to identifying projects that advance equity considerations throughout the District has been consistent and effective.
However, the Green Bank to date has not yet shown a commitment to work toward the District’s – and the world’s – most essential sustainability target: reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to zero by 2050. Rather, the Green Bank remains willing to fund and finance projects that expand the District’s dependency on methane gas, at a time when the District’s focus must be on doing all it can to reduce fossil fuel use. In a sad irony, the entity with “Green” in its name is proving to be an obstacle to the achievement of this essential goal.
The Clean Energy DC plan states, quite rightly, that, “Achieving its 2050 GHG carbon neutral target will require the District to eliminate fossil fuel use.” With only 28 years until that 2050 deadline, now – not later, or eventually – is the time when the Green Bank must be making a difference in pursuit of DC’s climate commitments.
The Sierra Club applauds the Green Bank’s use of pre-construction financing as a way to be a difference maker in whether or not projects get off the ground. However, in its pre-construction financing work, we have not yet observed any efforts by the Green Bank to drive projects which are still on the drawing board toward zero-carbon designs. These projects are ideal opportunities for an organization mandated to make a difference compared to what the market would do by itself, and yet we see no evidence that the Green Bank is taking those opportunities. We are concerned that this approach leaves the environmental and public-health impacts up to the developer. The Green Bank should be driving all such projects to the same high standard.
Our concern about the Green Bank’s lack of commitment to driving green infrastructure is made only more acute with the Green Bank’s new role as a source of financing for housing retrofits under the Affordable Housing Retrofit Accelerator. Because that mechanism also allows for installation of gas appliances and infrastructure, this represents another mechanism by which the Green Bank’s tools may be used to drive the District away from, rather than toward, achievement of its climate commitments.
At the Green Bank performance oversight hearing a year ago, the Sierra Club raised the same concerns we have today about the Green Bank using taxpayer dollars to advance fossil fuel projects. We thank you, Councilmember Cheh, for pressing the Green Bank at that hearing about what it would take to end the bank’s misguided fossil fuel financing. A year later, we request that you again ask CEO Eli Hopson:
- why the Green Bank remains willing to finance fossil fuels;
- if he has a plan for ending fossil fuel funding; and
- if not, whether we can expect the Green Bank to begin to comply with DC’s climate commitments.
If he does not have sufficient answers to these questions, a legislative remedy will likely be needed.
Thank you again, Councilmember Cheh, for the opportunity to testify today. The Green Bank is making strides and clearly maturing as an organization, but the agency has yet to take on its mandate to be a difference-maker in driving the city’s sustainability ambitions forward. The time is now for that to change.