County joins city and partners on application for Coalition for Green Capital municipal investment fund

Tompkins County planning staff reported March 10 that the county, the city of Ithaca and local partners submitted an application to the Coalition for Green Capital to become part of a pilot municipal investment fund created under the federal Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF).

Terry (last name not provided), speaking for the planning department, said the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s GGRF allocated funding to organizations to build a pipeline of climate projects for the National Climate Investment Fund (NCIF). "They were hoping to develop a pipeline — funding went to an organization called the Coalition for Green Capital," he said, noting the county worked with the city, community lenders and foundation partners. Under the program’s Phase 1, the winning municipalities in each state would get $250,000 to plan and perform market-building activities; a Phase 2 could supply about $2 million for implementation.

Terry described examples of project types that could be supported if the program advances: low-cost financing and grants for nonprofit building decarbonization, revolving loan funds for municipal or local-scale decarbonization projects, green mortgages tied to building efficiency upgrades, and technical planning tools such as a digital twin to evaluate building- and neighborhood-scale interventions. He said the application included Community Sustainability Partners (CSP) as an applicant and mentioned Park Foundation and other lenders as potential collaborators.

He told committee members the award would be made to CSP if successful and that CSP would contract consultants and partner organizations, and that Cornell’s systems lab had been invited as a technical partner to provide modeling support. "We just submitted the application with our partners last Tuesday. $250,000 would be given to CSP to develop a plan and a pipeline of market-building activities…" Terry said.

Committee members asked for details and cautioned that the federal GGRF funding has been subject to political review; Terry warned that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and federal administration actions could alter availability. "I will say that some of you may have seen in the headlines that…there's been trying to claw back $20,000,000,000 in greenhouse gas reduction fund that that's this funding that we're talking about now. So if they are successful, then everything I'm saying won't come to fruition," he said.

No formal vote took place. Planning staff said they will return with updates if the application is successful or if the federal funding picture changes.