Grassroots to Grasstops: Building Equity through the Clean Energy Transition

This session will explore how awardees of the National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF), a tool of the historic Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, will transform markets, disrupt systems, and create organizational synergies from grassroots to grasstops to bring clean technology to those most impacted by climate change. Specifically, the NCIF program will provide benefits to EPA-defined “Low-Income and Disadvantaged Communities,” with the goal of driving climate and economic justice for communities that have been subject to legacies of pollution, climate burden, and systemic underinvestment by capital markets and financial institutions. In this panel, we will discuss how Climate United, a coalition of mission-driven lenders and investors, will work across the climate and capital ecosystem to deepen clean technology access for such communities while also changing the current system of climate investment. Specifically, we will provide an overview of this historic opportunity; explore how innovative partnerships between changemakers, allocators, government, and other institutions can be forged to shift markets and increase impact; and discover mechanisms to build deep community trust and partnership. Together, we will meet the urgency of the climate crisis, while creating systems change needed for an equitable transition.