Two Alaska Native organizations are creating credit institutions to finance environmentally sustainable and clean energy infrastructure projects. They are the Valdez Native Tribe launched Alaska Green Capital, the first state-wide green bank in the spring of this year. Spruce Root is joining a alliance to establish an National green bank.
Joe Arvidson is on the operational group for Alaska Green Capital. The bank, he said, can gain access to new funding from the federal government, as well as private foundations. Then, they can give the funds to local companies and individuals via low-interest loans.
“There’s many people with amazing ideas, and they’re having problems getting funding,” he said. “This money can be given to people who would have otherwise not been in a position to obtain loans. We’re in a position to lose a bit of cash, and therefore we’re probably not the same as traditional banks. This could certainly aid in stimulating the economy.”
Projects can vary from carbon-absorbing kelp to oyster farms to hydroelectric power plants.
In addition, Spruce Root last month announced an alliance in conjunction with Coalition for Green Capital, an institution that is a green bank in the United States, that is better placed to make use of federal funds for its various regional partners.
Spruce Root is a nonprofit established by Sealaska Corporation that supports entrepreneurs in Southeast Alaska, especially rural and Native-owned companies. Spruce Root’s Executive Director Alana Peterson said the new funding will go towards renewable energy projects to reduce the rising costs of diesel power and transportation goods.
“If we are able to address the energy problems through solutions and solutions for the region we can be stronger,” Peterson said. “And that’s why the Green Bank allows us to establish a financing mechanism to assist in the development of solutions.”
She also pointed that this would also permit the interest earned from loans to be reinvested back to the community.
“If we’re making loans in the region, in millions of dollars is better to have that money being borrowed from an organization that is local and regional in order that the interest earned would be reinvested back into the region, instead of leaving the region entirely,” Peterson said.
Meanwhile, Gov. Mike Dunleavy introduced legislation last month that would set up the state’s first green bank, known as”the Energy Independence Fund, but the bill was not passed in the session in which it was scheduled to be.
