Hive grantee partners win $8B in federal funding

We join our partners in celebrating the historic announcement last week of groups selected to administer $20 billion in funding for cleaner energy and pollution reduction projects through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), including seven Hive Fund grantee partners who individually and as part of broader coalitions were awarded $8 billion. This powerful network of community-centered green finance institutions will work together with other awardees to ensure federal investments result in tangible benefits in Black, Brown, Indigenous, and low-income communities across the South, from renewable energy and energy efficiency upgrades that lower energy bills and build community wealth, to home weatherization and solar and battery infrastructure that reduces pollution and makes communities more resilient.

Awardees, including Inclusiv and Justice Climate Fund, with EPA representatives at the announcement last week. The announcement was made by Vice President Kamala Harris and EPA administrator Michael Regan in North Carolina, a leader in the South for renewable energy and clean technology and birthplace of the environmental justice movement. 

Federal funding has for too long travelled through the same, well-worn pathways, reinforcing inequities by delivering dollars to those with the most pre-existing capacity. Last week’s announcement is significant not just for the tremendous size of the investments, but also for the new pathways being forged that will deliver dollars into communities that have faced decades of disinvestment and permanently reshape the financial landscape toward justice.

Through early grant funding over the past several years, the Hive Fund helped seed and grow equitable green lending and other finance organizations that serve communities of color and low-income communities in the South and beyond. These groups were instrumental in pushing the EPA to channel GGRF funding through a diversity of organizations rather than a single national green bank. With support from the Hive Fund and others, they have been organizing, training, and planning to prepare for this opportunity, and are ready to deploy new lending models and products that remove barriers and expand access to affordable green finance.

The Hive Fund has also been supporting community groups across the South to plan collaboratively, ready projects for financing, and develop demonstration projects that can be replicated nationwide. In Atlanta, for example, a group of grantee partners are accessing federal technical assistance and grants, alongside philanthropic dollars, to train energy auditors and help local churches add energy efficiency, solar, batteries, and EV charging. They are working to aggregate the energy the churches produce and sell it back to the grid, creating distributed sources of renewable energy that decrease polluting emissions and make the energy system more resilient. As these early projects show success, the new green financing streams will allow them to replicate and scale.

This kind of community-level philanthropic support will continue to be critical to make the most of this moment and accelerate a transition to cleaner energy with Black, Brown, Indigenous, and low-income communities at the center. We look forward to supporting our partners as they work together to achieve this vision.

Congratulations!

Congratulations to Hive Fund grantee partners who were selected individually or as part of coalitions:

Our partners in the news



Julian Foley