Opinion: State energy fund would increase access to renewables

Over the last four years, the idea of a clean energy infrastructure fund has been considered in Missouri.

In 2018, the Missouri Division of Energy, in collaboration with the National Association of State Energy Officials, issued a report on the opportunity for a clean energy fund  to help finance gaps for energy savings in target markets, including agriculture, small commercial operations, and rural water and wastewater treatment facilities.

Since then, the Division of Energy has submitted requests for information on the idea of a clean energy infrastructure fund, as recent as last year.

Many stakeholders in the state, including the Missouri Solar Energy Industries Association, Renew Missouri, The Missouri Energy Initiative and my company, Sun Solar, have been excited about the prospect of establishing a “sustainability accelerator” that would use public funds to leverage private capital, making loans for clean energy and climate resilience measures. Leveraging private capital has proven successful, with the nation’s first “green bank,” a clean energy investment fund established a decade ago in Connecticut, raising on average $7 of private capital for every public dollar invested. 

A sustainability accelerator could help ensure an equitable energy transition in Missouri by reducing barriers for lower-income residents and small businesses to finance weatherization, heating system conversions and renewable power generation.

Environmental financing also could help municipalities with the daunting costs of fortifying infrastructure in the face of increasing storms and extreme weather events. Accelerator loans would fuel job growth and represent a sizable return on investment; research has shown that every dollar spent on hazard mitigation saves roughly  $6 in avoided costs. 

Many Missourians do not have access to a financial institution that will fund their project. If you have a credit score under 640, securing financing for solar, energy efficiency or HVAC becomes much harder and brings with it high interest rates. On the commercial side, nonprofits and small businesses need help more now than ever since the COVID-19 pandemic started.

The state solar association expects this fund to create  over 3,000 good-paying solar jobs and over 5,000 energy efficiency jobs. Good paying jobs during COVID is a must, and these are permanent jobs that will not leave the state. We need to invest in our infrastructure now before we have our grid hacked and shut down. Shutting down our grid will put us into the 1800s overnight, and we cannot afford to allow this to happen.

National funding also poses a large opportunity for an institution in the state. President Joe Biden’s jobs plan proposes $27 billion for a federal Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator, a national green bank that would raise private capital and channel funds to state-level accelerators – with a particular focus on underserved communities and those heavily dependent on fossil fuels.

Given bipartisan congressional support, approval for the federal accelerator could come by September. Now, the question for states is: How would you work to get that money out the door if it became available?

In Missouri, that question revolves around the creation of a local clean energy fund or sustainability accelerator. The state could either create a new nonprofit institution to fund clean energy or expand the operations of an existing financing authority like the Environmental Improvement Energy Resources Authority to include the key activities and responsibilities of a local sustainability accelerator.

Either way, this moment demands that we be ambitious. We must establish a Missouri Clean Energy Fund if we want to hastily receive federal funds that will help create jobs, retrofit our homes, and deploy the smarter and cleaner energy we deserve.

Caleb Arthur is the CEO and founder of Sun Solar LLC and is a member of the Missouri Environmental Improvement and Energy Resources Authority. He can be reached at carthur@ussunsolar.com.