The $6 billion Clean Communities Investment Accelerator competition will fund 2–7 hub nonprofits with the plans and capabilities to rapidly build the capacity of specific networks of public, quasi-public, and non-profit community lenders—such as community development financial institutions (including Native CDFIs), credit unions, green banks, housing finance agencies, minority depository institutions, and others—to ensure that households, small businesses, schools, and community institutions in low-income and disadvantaged communities have access to financing for cost-saving and pollution-reducing clean technology projects. EPA intends to implement this competition structure to maximize impact toward the three GGRF program objectives. While this competition description contains a broader set of expected competition details, below is a brief summary of the competition structure.
- Amount of Funding: $6 billion from Section 134(a)(3) of the Clean Air Act, which must be expended in low-income and disadvantaged communities.
- Number of Awards: 2–7 awards.
- Types of Applicants: Applicants must be “eligible recipients,” submitting applications either as individuals or as lead applicants in coalitions; applicants are permitted to participate in multiple applications within this competition, as well as across GGRF competitions.
- Application Components: Applicants will each submit a program plan, which articulates the applicant’s plan to use grant funds to advance GGRF program objectives, and a description of programmatic capabilities, which describes the applicant’s capabilities to execute that plan.
- Grant Activities: Grantees will provide capitalization funding (no more than $5 million per community lender), technical assistance subawards (no more than $625,000 per community lender), and technical assistance services to community lenders, implementing Section 134(b)(2) that authorizes funding for “indirect investments” with at least 95% of grant funds passing through directly to community lenders.
- Types of Projects: Grantees will support community lenders, which in turn support deployment of qualified projects within three broad categories: distributed power generation and storage; decarbonization retrofits of existing buildings; and transportation pollution reduction.
- Transparency: Grantees will be subject to robust program-level and institution-level reporting requirements, in addition to each applicant submitting governance and risk management plans.
- Justice40: Grantees will be expected to ensure that, in line with the Justice40 Initiative, 40% of benefits from this competition flow to disadvantaged communities.
EPA welcomes written technical feedback and comments on these and other details included in this competition description as EPA prepares the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO). Interested parties may send their written feedback and comments to ggrf@epa.gov by May 12, 2023.
EPA is not currently accepting applications for this competition. This competition description is intended to provide prospective applicants with information on potential application components and grant requirements, but this description does not supersede the text in the NOFO that will be posted on Grants.gov pursuant to 2 CFR § 200.204.
Prospective applicants should note that EPA intends to publish the NOFO as early as June 2023 to formally request applications.
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