New York’s Green Bank is seeking proposals for credit-worthy energy efficiency and renewable energy projects that face market barriers to financing.
This is the first request for proposals issued by the new state program, which plans to leverage its capital to encourage private market financing. The bank is not offering subsidies, but seeks financing proposals that will benefit from its participation.
“The NY Green Bank will be the catalyst for significantly accelerating the flow of private capital to energy efficiency and renewable energy projects and will send a message to the financial markets that expanding our clean energy economy is a priority for New York State,” said Governor Andrew Cuomo.
The RFP is open to energy service companies, developers, manufacturers, financial institutions, private sector lenders and others. The state will consider a range of commercially proven energy efficiency technologies for residential, commercial and industrial customers, as well as load reduction, clean on-site generation and renewables. Projects can be of various sizes.
Bidders may propose credit enhancements, co-investing with the private sector in a loan fund for clean energy, loan warehousing/short-term project aggregation or other similar arrangements that involve private sector financing partners.
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The Green Bank is beginning with a capitalization of $210 million. Of that, $165 million came from clean energy funds handled by the Public Service Commission and $45 million from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. The state eventually plans to build the bank’s capitalization to $1 billion. State officials hope the bank will allow New York to eventually eliminate clean energy subsidies.
The bank’s operating principles include:
- Provide credit support or aggregation mechanisms designed to scale markets for clean energy
- Partner rather than compete with market intermediaries that are constrained by the lack of available financing
- Leverage both the capital and institutional capabilities of its private sector partners
- Not provide subsidies, but rather earn a return on investments to preserve and gradually grow its capital base, and will recycle that capital into new clean energy projects
No deadline is set for bids; the RFP will remain open and the bank will evaluate proposals on an ongoing basis.
The full RFP is available here.
