Connecticut Green Bank – Geoff Willard – 2016

Goals 

The Connecticut Green Bank, a quasi-public agency that provides financing for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects for commercial and industrial properties, enlisted EDF Climate Corps fellow Geoff Willard to help identify new partnerships in the state’s healthcare and hospitality industries. Despite having financed successful projects across many sectors through its C-PACE program, the Green Bank had not yet established a clear strategy for engaging partners in healthcare and hospitality. Geoff’s primary goals were to analyze the current state of these sectors, establish new relationships with potential partner organizations and trade associations, and determine a strategy for moving forward. 

Solutions

Geoff first established new relationships with partners at the MetroHartford Alliance and, with their support, conducted healthcare and hospitality sector landscape analyses. He identified a large number of trade associations that seemed positioned to help the Green Bank conduct outreach in this sector. Using a partnership engagement tool, developed by another EDF Climate Corps fellow, he prioritized these organizations for partnership development. Geoff conducted extensive outreach and relationship-building with these identified groups, and met with leaders to initiate partnerships. Through these trade groups, the Green Bank has the ability to educate sector organizations about its programs and generate new project partnerships in a more productive and efficient way than would have otherwise been possible. 

Geoff also helped generate leads with specific companies seeking financing for energy efficiency projects. Geoff has worked to help set the Connecticut Green Bank towards a path that will develop impactful green energy projects in the state’s healthcare and hospitality industries.

Potential Impact

Typical Connecticut Green Bank C-PACE projects can save Connecticut businesses anywhere from several thousand dollars to several million dollars over the lifetime of the energy upgrade. Once the Green Bank has completed several healthcare and hospitality-related projects, these examples will facilitate ongoing outreach within the sector. With these industries, healthcare especially, being such large consumers of energy, strong partnerships with them could yield projects over the next several years that could save tens of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of GHG emissions.