ON TUESDAY, San Francisco District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder will introduce a resolution urging city leaders to explore funding opportunities for a Green Bank — a public, nonprofit financial institution designed to accelerate investment in clean energy and affordable housing. 

Unlike grant programs, green banks are public banks that use financing, meaning capital is expected to be repaid, allowing each dollar to be deployed repeatedly, according to the nonprofit Coalition for Green Capital, which focuses on accelerating the clean energy transition.

“A green bank is how we take our money back from Wall Street and reinvest it into housing, clean energy, and small businesses right here at home, and I hope to see widespread support for it on the Board of Supervisors,” Fielder said in a statement. 

In 2019, the state of California passed Assembly Bill 857 to provide a pathway for local government agencies to start public banks. The San Francisco Reinvestment Working Group, a group of community and labor organizations advocating for a public bank, was created the following year by the board of supervisors, according to the group’s website.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said green banks are used by state and local policymakers to deploy a combination of public and private financial services to fund projects that are not sufficiently met by other financial markets. In some cases, green banks can offer subsidized loans at interest rates lower than typical market offerings.

In a statement Monday, Fielder said a green bank would provide financing for renewable energy infrastructure that would help San Francisco reach its net-zero emissions goal by 2040. She said it would also support local enterprise and affordable housing. 

Fielder said her proposal aligns with the voter sentiment revealed in a poll by the San Francisco Public Bank Coalition, a nonprofit organization with a mission to educate the public about public banks. Their poll found that 67% of voters said they support creating a public bank, and 70% favor a green bank. 

Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.