Tag: grants

Effective Utility Management

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Guest author Catherine Noyes is an Associate Consultant at Raftelis Financial Consultants.

Through the 1960s, the utility business was all about protecting public health – making sure that technology was in place to ensure safe and reliable water and wastewater service to a growing population.  In the 1970s, the focus on public health was expanded to include the environment.  The EPA was established, and the federal government enacted legislation to protect clean air and water.  With this legislation came large federal grants, which funded expansions to the nation’s water and sewer infrastructure. Continue reading

Revolving Credit – All Grown Up

Jen Weiss is a Finance Analyst at the Environmental Finance Center. 

Quick … what do you think of when you hear the word “revolving?”  A revolving door?  A revolving restaurant?  Perhaps a revolving credit card?

In the environmental finance world, the term “revolving” is being paired up with the equally unassuming term “green” to create an effective energy efficiency and renewable energy financing tool called a green revolving fund.  At its core, it is a revolving credit instrument, operating much like a credit card which, according to Merriam-Webster, is a pretty straight forward financial tool: “a credit which may be used repeatedly up to the limit specified after partial or total repayments have been made.” But a green revolving fund is not your everyday Visa or Mastercard with a $5,000 upper limit.  It is the more sophisticated older sibling of the credit card, the sibling that has grown up and gone off to college. And while it is there, it is making a significant contribution to the bottom line.

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Finding the Right Grant for State and Tribal Wetland Programs

Glenn Barnes is a senior project director at the Environmental Finance Center at the University of North Carolina.  Glenn is the project manager of the Sustainable Finance for Wetland Programs project funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

If I am leading a workshop or giving a presentation on any environmental finance topic, most likely at some point these five words will leave my mouth: “Grants are not sustainable finance.”

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