Following the Money
Signals Brief #6 (2026.02.16) | The Intermediaries Between Climate Capital and Community
Follow the capital flows.
Last week I wrote about Puerto Rico, where 200,000 families built their own distributed energy infrastructure because the centralized grid kept failing them.
That model—distributed, trust-based, flexible—is not unique to Puerto Rico. New England Grassroots Environment Fund, Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, and NDN Collective dedicated to building Indigenous People Power—each arrived at similar design principles independently: prioritize community leadership, reach beyond local, well-known incumbents, and give grantees room to adapt with a long-term horizon.
But the largest federal climate investment ever designed for community deployment is the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (or GGRF). It was built on different architecture entirely. And it’s now frozen.
How the money was supposed to flow
The GGRF split $20 billion between two complementary channels.1 The National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF, $14 billion) capitalized three national green bank-style entities designed to leverage private investment at ratios of 5:1 to 20:1. The Clean Communities Investment Accelerator (CCIA, $6 billion) capitalized five ecosystem intermediaries allocating capital to Community Development Financial Institutions (or CDFIs) designed to build community lender capacity in low-income and disadvantaged communities.2
The design was intentional: green banks provide financial engineering and scale; CDFIs provide financial leverage, trust relationships and community reach. Two different kinds of infrastructure, designed to work together.
This is complex architecture. The organizations operating within it bring different strengths, different networks, and different theories of change—by design. The question I am investigating is not whether these institutions are doing the right work. They are. Instead, I am more curious about where the gaps in the infrastructure itself create barriers even strong institutions cannot overcome alone.
Where the capital stalls
Follow $6 billion from Congress to a community lender in rural Louisiana. The money moves through several intermediaries — and encounters three structural gaps, the same gaps posed in my inaugural essay, The Convergence Imperative.
First, the Infrastructure Gap. At CDFI Friendly America, Mark Pinsky’s CDFI Market Map is the first geospatial analysis of CDFI coverage. As of today, Mark and his team have identified 1,272 communities3 where lending falls below 80% of the national per capita average, representing at least $50 billion in expansion opportunity.4 Based on recent communications, I learned that 20 communities climbed out of desert status, showing this model is working. Where CDFIs aren’t lending, climate capital has no local pipeline. Pinsky’s CDFI Friendly America addresses this by standing up lean local hubs in “Opportunity Markets” that organize demand and attract existing CDFIs into underserved markets that meet the definition of a Qualified Investment Area.5 In Bloomington, Indiana, that approach produced $26 million in financing—a 27-fold increase in 4 years, compared to overall CDFI lending in the market over the prior 15 years. In Tulsa, a hub launched in 2024 generated a $100 million pipeline in under a year. But most CDFI desert communities don’t have hubs yet.
It’s worth noting: eight of the ten congressional districts receiving the most CDFI investment over the past decade are represented by Republicans.6 The flow of money I am illustrating is purely green, not red or blue. CDFIs create jobs, finance small businesses, and build housing across the political map. The coverage gap is an economic development problem, not an ideological one.
Next, the Trust Gap. Opportunity Finance Network views climate as CDFIs’ “third wave,” as their CEO, Harold Pettigrew, has framed it, after affordable housing and small business lending. His organization received the largest CCIA award at $2.29 billion to build climate lending capacity across the sector. Before the freeze, OFN was prepared to announce $228 million in initial awards to 26 organizations in 30+ states through its pilot program.7 That $6 billion through CCIA awardees matched nearly the entire amount the CDFI Fund deployed in its 30-year history. The scale signaled institutional commitment.
The termination of those agreements revealed something deeper than a policy disagreement: an architectural vulnerability. $20 billion flowing through a single fiscal agent, under terminable grant agreements, means any administration—regardless of political party—can freeze the pipeline with a single directive. Trust between institutions and the communities they serve isn’t built in neat, annual grant cycles. Trust is built over decades of consistent community presence. When the architecture allows that consistency to be disrupted overnight, the trust deficit compounds regardless of who occupies the White House. Pettigrew’s message at OFN’s 2025 conference was clear: the sector’s future cannot rest on any one funder, or any one moment.8
Finally, the Intermediary Gap. Even when infrastructure exists and trust holds, someone has to translate between federal program design and community-level deployment. The Justice Climate Fund was built for this: a 28-member coalition—including the African American Alliance of CDFI CEOs, NALCAB, Inclusiv, and Oweesta—structured to move $940 million through 270+ community lenders reaching 85% of Justice40 communities and 58% of tribal counties.9 JCF represents something specific in this ecosystem: a coalition of established institutions that came together because the existing intermediary infrastructure was not sufficiently directing capital through minority-led lenders to communities of color. That’s a design intervention, not a redundancy.
With federal funds frozen, JCF is adapting—securing private grants for renewable energy in Native American communities, partnering with state-level programs, maintaining lender relationships built during the GGRF application process. As CEO Amir Kirkwood has noted publicly, federal administrations change, but community needs don’t.10 These are strategic pivots, but they operate at a fraction of the scale the original architecture intended. The gap between what’s needed and what’s currently flowing is where innovation has to happen.
What’s ahead
On February 24, the D.C. Circuit hears en banc oral arguments on the GGRF freeze.11 The legal question is narrow: whether EPA followed proper procedure when it terminated executed grant agreements. The structural question is broader.
Climate finance has the capital—$1.3 trillion annually at the global level12—and intermediary models that work: CDFIs, green banks, distributed grantmakers, community foundations. What it lacks is durable connective tissue between them — architecture that does not depend on a single funding source, a single fiscal agent, or a single administration’s priorities.
Three gaps. Three organizations doing essential work within them. And an open question about whether the current infrastructure can be enhanced to close them—or whether we need to build something new alongside it.
That’s the convergence question. And this is what this newsletter exists to investigate.
I am building a running list of intermediary models reaching frontline communities—with or without federal funding. If you’re seeing this work in your ecosystem, I want to hear about it. Reply, or forward this to someone doing the work.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Biden-Harris Administration Announces $20 Billion in Grants to Mobilize Private Capital and Deliver Clean Energy and Climate Solutions,” April 4, 2024. https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/biden-harris-administration-announces-20-billion-grants-mobilize-private-capital-and. Total GGRF allocation: $27 billion ($14B NCIF, $6B CCIA, $7B Solar for All) under IRA Section 60103.
CDFI stands for Community Development Financial Institution, a specialized, mission-driven financial organization certified by the U.S. Department of the Treasury CDFI Fund.
CDFI Friendly America's CDFI Market Map originally identified 1,292 CDFI Opportunity Markets using Treasury CDFI Fund Transaction Level Report data from 2005–2022. With the addition of 2023 TLR data, 20 communities moved above the lending threshold, reducing the count to 1,272. Figure confirmed by Mark Pinsky, President, CDFI Friendly America, personal communication, February 18, 2026. See CDFI Market Map at https://www.cdfifriendlyamerica.com/cdfi-market-map.
CDFI Friendly America originally estimated the CDFI Opportunity Market at $48 billion based on 2005–2022 lending data. Mark Pinsky has characterized that figure as conservative; with the addition of 2023 data and updated per capita averages ($814, up from $714), the opportunity market exceeds $50 billion. Personal communication, February 18, 2026.
Mark Pinsky provided this definition: a CDFI "Opportunity Market" is defined by two things: CDFI lending below 80% of national per capita average and significant economic distress measured by at least 50% of the census tracts in the area (could be a place, a county, a city, a metro area, or a state) meeting the U.S. Department of the Treasury CDFI Fund definition of a Qualified Investment Area (IA); an IA has at least one economic indicator of high distress.
Theodos, Brett, and Noah McDaniel. “CDFIs Are Pillars of Local Economic Growth for Rural and Urban Communities.” Urban Wire, Urban Institute, March 19, 2025. https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/cdfis-are-pillars-local-economic-growth-rural-and-urban-communities
OFN $228M initial awards: Opportunity Finance Network, “Opportunity Finance Network Statement on Arbitrary EPA Funding Cancellation,” March 13, 2025. https://www.ofn.org/news/ofn-statement-on-arbitrary-epa-funding-cancellation/
Harold Pettigrew, opening plenary remarks, OFN 2025 Conference ("Opportunity Next"), Washington, D.C., October 2025. Quoted in Em Beall, "Day One at OFN 2025: What 'Opportunity Next' Means for CDFIs Like Invest PGH," Invest PGH, October 21, 2025. https://www.investpgh.org/news/day-one-at-ofn-2025
Justice Climate Fund, “Justice Climate Fund Selected by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for Clean Communities Investment Accelerator Program,” PR Newswire, April 4, 2024. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/justice-climate-fund-selected-by-us-environmental-protection-agency-for-clean-communities-investment-accelerator-program-302108282.html. Coverage and community data from Justice Climate Fund, “How We Work,” https://justiceclimatefund.org/how-we-work/
Amir Kirkwood, interview in Eric Ressler, "Spotlight on Amir Kirkwood, CEO of Justice Climate Fund," Design By Cosmic, August 4, 2025. https://designbycosmic.com/insights/spotlight/amir-kirkwood/
D.C. Circuit granted en banc rehearing December 17, 2025. See Olivia Guarna, “Court of Appeals Sets Aside Preliminary Injunction in GGRF Litigation,” Climate Law Blog, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia Law School, September 4, 2025. https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/climatechange/2025/09/04/court-of-appeals-sets-aside-preliminary-injunction-in-ggrf-litigation/.
Climate Policy Initiative, “Global Landscape of Climate Finance 2023,” November 2023. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/global-landscape-of-climate-finance-2023/. The $1.3 trillion figure represents the annual climate finance goal endorsed at COP29 (Baku, 2024) under the New Collective Quantified Goal framework.