Vin Valentino - Building Washington's First Green Bank From Scratch

[00:00:10] Christy: Welcome to Green Champions.

[00:00:11] Dominique: Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people sharing sustainability success stories.

[00:00:15] Christy: This podcast is a platform for green champions to share their stories and plant new ideas. I'm Christy.

[00:00:21] Dominique: And I'm Dominique.

[00:00:21] Christy: Today we're joined by Vincent Valentino, energy economy lead for Washington State Department of Commerce. He leads efforts to grow Washington's clean energy economy, focusing on investment, policy strategy, and building partnerships across government, industry, and communities.

Today, we're talking about Vin's Green Champion story, focusing on his work with green banks in Seattle. Thanks for being here, Vin.

[00:00:44] Vin: Thanks for having me.

[00:00:45] Christy: Awesome. So last time, in your first episode, we talked a lot about Columbus and your education and Land-Grant and a little bit about Stanford Health. And people can listen to that episode and get caught up on everything that happened there. But now you are making a transition to Seattle.

So tell us a little bit about how you became a part of working here in the city of Seattle.

[00:01:08] Vin: So I think I had been at Stanford for about a year, and a really good experience, but wasn't quite for me. I have some family up in Seattle, and when I was at Stanford, the Inflation Reduction Act had passed. And so one of the parts of my job was briefing the senior leadership in our department on all things related to climate and sustainability.

So I had to do a really deep dive on the Inflation Reduction Act. And as I was reading through it, I was like: Holy shit, this is, people are not describing this well. This is a monumental landmark thing that has I think shifted the economy. And I didn't really see an opportunity to access that work when I was at Stanford.

And so it was again, the good fortune of a few opportunities aligning, and a job opening had opened in the city of Seattle's Office of Economic Development. And the job was the green economy strategic advisor. And so in Seattle, in the Office of Economic Development, there's some teams focused on small businesses, and then there's a team called the Key Industries and Workforce Development team that focuses on the macro economy, the regional sector-based impacts to the city's economy, really with a lens of job creation.

And so I applied for the job, and it is honestly is like what the EEDS degree is designed for. There's policy elements, there's some technical know-how. So again, good fortune, moved up, took me a day and a half to drive up from San Francisco, and started in late 2022, right as the Inflation Reduction Act was kicking into high gear.

And so there's a whole lot that happened while I was there. For the first two years, I was just the green economy strategic advisor, and then in the last year and a half, I got promoted to being the division manager. So I then oversaw a staff of seven with different sector focuses, film, nightlife, workforce, maritime, and I maintained the lens of leading green economy programming.

The whole name of the game in that period of time was how do we take advantage of the opportunities from the Inflation Reduction Act, knowing it is also an industrial policy, the first that the US has had in my lifetime, certainly. And part of the role was to work really closely with the city of Seattle's Office of Sustainability and Environment.

And there was just the climate justice director, a woman named Lylianna Allala, was on my hiring panel. We connected very quickly after I started at the city, and really would just work together on a whole bunch of things. And I think in my gosh, maybe after I'd been there for three or four months, the head of my department, the head of the sustainability department, and her and I all got together and we're like, "What can we do to take advantage of the IRA and really supercharge what Seattle's known for, which is being a very climate forward city?"

And we kicked around a few different ideas, and we landed on the fact that Washington doesn't have a green bank, and there was specific funding in the IRA to create state-level regional green banks throughout the country, capitalize them with funding. Maybe an important point of clarification for folks, a green bank is like a purpose-driven financial institute.

So if you're familiar with a CDFI, a Community Development Financial Institute, they basically create specific products that catalyze clean energy deployment. I think the Central Ohio or the Regional Green Fund in Columbus is a good example. And really the core idea of why create a green bank is there's not enough public funding in the world to foster the clean energy transition.

And so the idea of a green bank is how can you create tools that use the rules of finance to stretch $1 much further and create an institution that can play a financier of projects, a matchmaker of private and public funding, and really supercharge the economics behind clean energy deployment, though there's also models tested in some other states on things like water circularity.

There's a lot I could talk about with the city of Seattle. I absolutely love Seattle. 

[00:04:55] Dominique: I wanna pause you there 'cause I'm really glad you explained green banks. Taking a few steps back, green economy. Can you explain what it means to think about a green economy and why that's important?

[00:05:06] Vin: Yeah. 

It's funny, when I started at the city and the term was green economy, one of the first things I said is like, "We either need to change this or define this 'cause it could mean literally anything." And it's a little '90s coded, which we all love. But when I was in the role, we defined green economy as a program that we focused on how we could proactively build the industries, jobs, and grow the technology we need to live in a world that adapts to and mitigates the effects of climate change.

So in maybe more practical terms, what we thought most about is how could we find ways to grow companies that foster clean energy deployment, circular systems, and do so at a scale that creates real, meaningful, high-wage, low-barrier jobs like electricians, even manufacturers, which is quite huge out here.

So the term is a little nebulous, but you can broadly think of it as clean energy, circular systems that benefit people and move us faster through the clean energy transition.

[00:06:05] Dominique: And then I also wanna give you a chance. Thank you, by the way. You hit at what was really impactful with the Inflation Reduction Act. 

Can you explain the impact it had on the concept of a green economy and why that's so important that that funding was made available?

[00:06:21] Vin: The Inflation Reduction Act, the name is hilarious because it, I think, was named that as a way to get it through Congress. And it is part of essentially the Build Back Better package that the Biden administration was really pushing, that then got broken into three parts. The Inflation Reduction Act was one part, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was another part, and the CHIPS and Science Act was another part.

It's important to know that there's three of them, though the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRA was by far the most climate-focused. There was some climate clean tech focuses in the Bipartisan Infrastructure law. It really, again, was a monumental climate policy. It's the US' first ever national climate policy.

It was also the first industrial policy that the US had had probably since the '70s or the '80s, and really focused on how do we build the technologies that decarbonize our economy as a whole. Knowing that to build those technologies and to deploy them means a lot of good jobs, both jobs that require degrees, both advanced and middle of the road, and a lot of jobs that don't require degrees and are often more oriented towards union work and apprentices. There was everything in there from seed funding green banks throughout the country to, I think, funding offshore wind studies, to establishing regional hubs that produced different types of hydrogen that could be used to decarbonize industrial systems, provide feedstock for sustainable fuels such as sustainable aviation fuel, sustainable maritime fuel.

And then it just mass funded deployment everywhere of existing clean energy technology. So solar panels, wind, typically onshore wind, battery systems. But I think importantly is it also really it introduced a lot of tax credits. That was really where the bang for the buck was, and it brought a lot of private capital in.

And so people were building factories to build fuel cells, to build EVs. There was a whole EV component to it. So it's again, could be a whole episode, but a monumental national bill that really galvanized the US for the first time to do something about climate change in a way that really, really impacted people's lives.

And it was just an absolute privilege to be on the ground in a city like Seattle where climate is front of mind for a lot of folks to figure out what does it mean to take advantage of this? How do we maximize this? And there was lessons learned certainly, but broadly it was that.

[00:08:50] Christy: tell us a little bit about what you were doing with the Green Banks in Seattle and how it's transitioned to where you are today.

So after this 

[00:09:00] Vin: meeting I had with the head of the sustainability office, the head of the economic office, and the climate justice director, we got tasked with figuring out how to create a green bank. And it turned into-- Dominic, this is how we met. That's why I was in Boston, was trying to figure out, I think it was GreenFin 23, what the heck is a green bank? What does it do? I got some of my questions answered there, didn't get all of them answered, had a lovely time in Boston. 

[00:09:22] Dominique: I remember us chatting about your role in Seattle and you were like, "I think I'm like building the plane right now. I'm not really sure." And you were excited about it and yeah.

[00:09:33] Vin: Yeah, it was very exciting.

[00:09:34] Dominique: That also, thinking about that too, 'cause you were at a financial conference that was focused on this topic. As point of curiosity, how widespread are green banks? I'm sitting here in a city, I know we have one, and I'm familiar. You only a couple years ago were part of establishing this for Seattle. Just giving us frame of reference, as you're building this, how common are they in general?

[00:09:55] Vin: Prior to the Inflation Reduction Act, there was like New York was the gold standard. Both the state and the city have a green bank and like green bank-like functions. If you look at the Coalition for Green Capital is a great place to kinda learn more about green banks and like where they exist, but they were not as common as they are now or as they are now before the Inflation Reduction Act.

So there was a really catalyzing moment about the federal government saying "Here's $300 billion and a bunch of tax credits to do something." And to watch the whole of the economy turn on that was just crazy. But, in the wake of that, knowing there was a specific funding bucket to create green banks, they got created all over the country.

Another good example is Michigan Saves. some things to know, they take different forms. So Michigan Saves, it's a nonprofit entity, gets funding from the state, receives some federal funding to create different loan products. The New York Green Bank is a part of, there's a state level one that's a part of a larger organization called NYSERDA, gold standard I think for like state level clean energy groups.

Massachusetts Green Bank is another one that's nonprofit. They do some really great work for housing decarbonization. Here in Washington, we created a nonprofit one, but they're much more common now, though they have withered a little bit as the funding has been held up by the current administration.

[00:11:11] Dominique: And then when we think about projects that the green banks allow to come to life, can you walk us through maybe some favorite examples of yours from being in Washington?

[00:11:21] Vin: I wish I could, but the green bank here is still nascent, so it might be better to give an example of, like, how it's been created and then an example of what it looks like when it's fully on. So we set out, we talked with green banks around the country, talked with some consultants, got plugged into some national efforts. And I was working at the city of Seattle at the same time the current governor of Washington had tasked the Department of Commerce, where I now work, with creating a green bank.

And through getting connected, with the woman working at Commerce at the time, who was also trying to create a green bank, we just combined forces, funded a couple different things to establish a nonprofit, engage a whole system of people throughout the state that were making green financial products, really playing in the green finance space.

And we did an assessment of what was out there, what were some of the systemic barriers, why had this never happened before. Important thing to note is that in Washington, up until very recently, we've had the cheapest energy in the country, in part because we have a hydroelectric system that powers, I think, 70-ish percent of the state's energy system, and that thing was built 100 years ago, and that means the cost of the energy coming off the dam system here is quite low.

Great, because there's very low carbon emitted from that. There are ecological impacts. There is tribal sovereignty impacts. But it had kneecapped previous efforts to create a green bank. We also have something here that some states have called a prohibition on gift of public funds written into our state constitution.

This could be its whole episode. This basically goes back to the railroads, but it basically is a rule that says states cannot give a private entity money that will purely benefit them. There needs to be some public benefit. Because of that, people had shied away from creating a green bank in Washington using state funds.

But when federal funding was available, it was like, "Okay, this is a real opportunity to do something we've been afraid to do for a long time or been unable to do." And so through the efforts, some very bureaucratic of establishing a 501[c][3], some very cool of bringing people together that had never been in the same room.

And we also were doing some work with the legislature and the governor's office at the time and created a very nascent organization with a board of three or four. Received around $800,000 from the state legislature as operational funding to hire an initial executive director, to build out a larger board, and come up with a capitalization strategy so the bank could actually fund projects, create loan products.

And that turned into recruiting our first executive director, which is, again, sounds pretty mundane, but for me, I had been in a room at the beginning of 2023, and then been in that same room at the beginning of 2025, and agreed with a group of people that I had known for about a year and a half and were really passionate on that we had found the right person, that they were gonna do exactly what we needed to do, and we all felt quite confident.

Fast-forward, that was just over a year, year and a half ago, that executive director, Eli Lieberman, great experience in the space, and he successfully capitalized the Green Bank from the state of Washington for $25 million in this first year. And if successful in deploying that money, financing the projects, getting the private leverage that the legislature has tasked us with doing, then they will give us additional money, ideally.

And that again, is crazy because that is a brand new tool that is certainly there's some public funding there, but if seeded correctly, if they're funding enough projects, that could be a self-sustaining entity that could help the state meet its climate goals in a way that the budget may not always allow and public dollars may not always be spent.

Examples of what this looks like, there's some in Columbus. C-PACE is a good example. Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy. It is like a grant where basically you take a small lien on property, on a commercial property to pay for the installation of something like a solar system or weatherization or a bit of both.

And the way the financial product works is like you take that loan out, but it's based on a projected reduction in your utility costs. So if you're commercial building owner, if you're a residential building owner, you basically break even, but you have a solar system on your house, on your building.

C-PACE is a very common example, and it is really geared towards commercial level buildings or residential buildings. But then you start getting into some of the more interesting things, more interesting ways finance can play a role. So something I think a lot about in this job is an infrastructure level revolving loan fund.

This is something that's like a $500 million fund, an enormous amount of money that is, again, not grant-oriented, requires a private match to come in that could help us fund industrial decarbonization projects out here, could help build infrastructure that is designed from the jump to be a part of the clean energy economy.

NYSERDA out in New York is really the best example of what this looks like. They created that organization as a government entity, gosh, back in the '70s, and now it is like a multi-billion dollar agency that just funds clean energy at grid level throughout the state. It's-- I wish, I can't wait to get there.

Another interesting example of what this could look like is the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. Again, a really brilliant organization that is really focused on climate tech commercialization. They receive some funding from the state. They're not quite a green bank, but they do offer different financial products.

So they offer an early stage climate tech innovator fund that will seed fund some organizations. They offer incentives, tax incentives on behalf of the state for people deploying clean energy. So I feel like I might still be a little nebulous with this, but those are a couple places of what a mature green bank could look like and the different types of way you can spend money to catalyze clean energy and deployment and climate action.

[00:16:59] Dominique: No, that was great. And I think, yeah, thank you for explaining the role of the green banks and why they're powerful. I think also you gave us that bird's-eye view of how federal funding unlocked this pathway that now can lean on its own belief in the ROI of being resilient as communities. And also just being smart in how we build our systems, and letting them fund themselves.

I think that is the only way we're gonna have our control over how funding fights climate change. Your entrepreneurial approach to building that out of thin air and build something that will last, I think is just how we get these problems actually solved. And I think also that gave me the idea of we probably could have a whole miniseries with different green banks and their favorite project, and that could be so cool.

So I appreciate the variety from a geographical standpoint and from a project example standpoint of ways we can envision green banks changing our communities. Your deep understanding also really shows. I think my last question here, in the interest of time, is just what's bringing you hope right now?

What's making you excited when looking ahead with these things?

[00:17:59] Vin: First I do just have to say, again, I appreciate the compliment. All of this was a team project. I was one of many people that made this happen. Climate action, economic development, it's all a team sport. It can be a really bleak and troubling time to care about climate and most things that are good, let's be honest.

But I have to tell you, having worked in a city that is profoundly climate-oriented in a state that is profoundly climate-oriented, there's definitely a sense of we can continue doing this. And so despite what our current federal government is I do believe it will change one day. But I also, I think something really important happened when the Inflation Reduction Act was passed, and I can maybe give you an example of this.

Out here, offshore wind is something that has been a glimmer in people's eye for a long time. There's a whole bunch of nuance there. Offshore wind on the West Coast has to be different than it is on the East Coast and in the Gulf. But it is a mega project. It is something that will take 15 years to build.

Every state on the West Coast and probably BC and probably Alaska and probably Hawaii, would need to be involved just given the size of the work, the amount of planning that would have to go into it. And we were fortunate enough in 2023 to launch an offshore wind effort in partnership with the state, led by a really brilliant organization called Maritime Blue that is regional and does some fascinating work.

And I say all of this because I had to drive a city official down to a press conference where we announced the city is investing in this. We're going to do this. This was a person that by all accounts cared about climate, wanted to see climate action, but was not their main purview in their role and in their career.

And I have this vivid memory of standing on this port with the governor, with all of these unions, and this elected official just watching folks and watching cameras get ready, and they turned to me and said, "Is this what it looks like to do something?" And it like, a whole bunch of people who never have been involved in climate in any way got a sense of what it looks like to do something about climate change between 2022 and 2025.

And there's a whole lot of new people that are now a part of the climate movement, and they are not the people that I think we typically think about when it comes to climate action. These are business people. These are unions that candidly many of them for a long time thought environmentalism was about destroying their jobs or their businesses.

And they all just got a chance to see climate action is good for business. And if you are investing in the right companies, the right projects, and pushing the right policies, we actually can proactively build a really profoundly strong economy that not only does something about climate change but modernizes the infrastructure of this entire country, of the entire world in a way that creates meaningful jobs and meaningful wealth generation for people everywhere.

And the work is so massive that it requires bringing in people that have not been a part of economic booms in the past. BIPOC communities, tribal communities, women who have never led these companies. There is such an opportunity, and again, it almost has to happen because the scale is so big, it cannot just be old white dudes doing this.

there's not enough of us, and I say that as a aging white dude. And to me it's yes, we live in a time of insanity and craziness, but in a couple of years, when the government did something for the first time on climate change, we made more progress than even the most optimistic assessments of what the IRA could do, and we brought a lot of new allies in.

And to me, the work continues in many of the states around the country that still prioritize this, and in some of the states that don't think about climate, but think about cheap energy and good jobs. And it is only a matter of time until this is no longer a partisan issue because it's just a good economic policy.

And maybe that's naive, but I continue to see new people showing up to things that have not been climate folks in the past, but are ready to do something about climate for a whole host of different reasons. And I think it's only a matter of time before we jump back into accelerating through this, and I'm just really excited for when that finally happens.

[00:21:57] Dominique: I wanna make everything you just said into a T-shirt.

[00:21:59] Christy: Yeah.

[00:21:59] Vin: That's a long T-shirt.

[00:22:02] Christy: Thank you for being on today. thank you for sharing that aha moment of this is what it looks like when we do something good and we do it together.

I think that is something that people need to take away. How can people connect with you and continue to learn from you? How do they stay connected?

[00:22:18] Vin: LinkedIn. It's really the best way to get ahold of me. 

[00:22:21] Dominique: Thanks, Vin. Thanks for chatting with us.

[00:22:23] Vin: Thanks for having me.

[00:22:24] Dominique: Each guest brings a different approach to sustainability. We're here to highlight people that are doing the work that inspires others because climate action takes many forms.

[00:22:31] Christy: As always, you can find all of our episodes and support the show at thegreenchampions.com. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Stay connected with us on LinkedIn and Instagram, @greenchampionspod. Our music is by Zayn Dweik. Thanks for listening to Green Champions.

We'll be back next time with another sustainability success story.