SOLAR TODAY - March 2010

the biz | green stocks report
Green Banks for Green People
Wouldn’t it be nice to finance your project through a LEED-certified loan officer?
By ROnA FRIED, Ph.D.

Rona Fried, Ph.d., is president of Sustainable Business.com, the online community for green business: daily sustainable business and investor news, Green Dream Jobs, Business Connections and the sustainable investing newsletter, Progressive Investor. Contact Fried at rona@ sustainablebusiness.com.

Consult your financial advisor before making any investment.

At a time when people have lost faith in financial institutions, many of us have thought about trans- ferring funds from a “too big to fail” bank to a community bank, and in particular, a green community bank.

The biggest banks, of course, were complicit in the fall 2008 market crash and subsequent credit crisis and took advantage of a taxpayer bailout. Beyond that, NGOs have been taking them to task for years for the harm they cause to the environment. Big banks finance coal plants, oil and gas pipelines through the Amazon, the Three Gorges Dam in China and many of the world’s environmentally destructive projects.

As signatories to the Equator Principles, a set of benchmarks for determining, assessing and managing social and environmental risk in project financing, the biggest banks have been moving toward more environmentally benign lending practices. But they have a long way to go.

Meanwhile, there are now several trustworthy, successful green-oriented banks in the United States that give preferential loans to individuals and businesses for energy efficiency retrofits, renewable energy and more.

Operating since 1973, Chicago-based ShoreBank ( shorebankcorp.com) serves the social needs of the community by lending to urban redevelopment projects. It spun off ShoreBank Pacific, which has been financing green company businesses and projects in the Northwest.

San Francisco-based New Resource Bank (new resourcebank.com) opened in 2005 and makes available green loans, such as its solar home equity financing loan, for projects that conventional banks won’t fund. Their fixed-term solar certificates of deposit help fund solar projects in the state.

“We want our customers to ask what every dollar is
used for, even in their checking accounts.”

—SANdy WIGGINS, E3BANK

Last year, Florida’s First Green Bank (firstgreenbank. com) completed its fundraising round in just five weeks. Common Good Bank ( commongoodbank.com) is working on an innovative community network structure, beginning in western Massachusetts.

And e3bank ( e3bank.com) is poised to open as a community bank in the greater Philadelphia region. Wouldn’t it be great to sit with a loan officer who has LEED certification? And to work with a bank that has a triple-bottom-line business model?