green banks – The Progressive Democrat

By Nancy Cook in the National Journal

About three years ago, Connecticut changed its approach to promoting renewable energy: It decided to act more like a bank than like a state government. Gone were many of the subsidies that had propped up the regional clean-energy market for years. In their place, Connecticut officials started to lend money to fund commercially viable green projects. The goal was to combine public financing with private loans from community banks and other financial institutions to help create a renewable-energy marketplace.

This marks a shift in the argument for clean energy from a moral to a capitalist one. “Connecticut is trying to demonstrate that clean energy is an arena where money can be made,” says Daniel Esty, the former commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and a professor at Yale Law School. “It’s not just a story about clean energy. It’s a story about cheaper, cleaner energy, and that has much broader appeal.”