State of play in green schools organizing (again)
Readers, for some reason Buttowndown has been sending out two posts a week from me. It’s a glitch on their end, apologies! So I’m resending a couple posts that got doubled up mistakenly—and adding some new content to each given events that have transpired over the last couple weeks.
A theme that’s run throughout this newsletter is understanding and organizing for decarbonized school infrastructure, specifically making green school fnance more public. Given that the second Trump administration is running amok with federal programs, what’s the state of play in green school organizing right now when it comes to finance?
The Inflation Reduction Act has been the cornerstone of public financing for green school infrastructure. I’ve come to think of it as the beginning of a new political economy for public education finance, a sort of social democracy/state capitalist green fiscal mutualism that uses federal programs to orient public and private resources towards decarbonizing schools.
I’ve written about two of the law’s most exciting programs: the elective pay tax credit and green bank capitalization through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. I’ve also written about green schools organizing happening through People’s Action and elsewhere. (They actually had an event just last week launching their Green and Healthy Schools ToolKit, check it out.)
Also, Sunrise Movement is launching a new educators’ organizing initiative towards a general strike in 2028, which you should check out.
Educational leader Brenda Cassellius and UnDauntedK12’s Jonathan Klein wrote an op-ed in EdWeek recently about the Inflation Reduction Act’s programs, focusing on the elective pay tax credit program. They write:
While the new Trump administration brings uncertainty about the future of federal support for school infrastructure, we urge district leaders to continue to evaluate how these funds could underwrite their projects. We also urge them to shape their own destiny with proactive outreach to their congressional representatives expressing support for preserving what is known as elective pay or direct pay and the underlying energy tax credits.
Their piece focuses on elective pay tax credits, which indeed are uncertain. We know that Trump is against the “Green New Scam,” but there’s a lot of ambiguity about money that’s out the door, being stopped, or in the process of maybe being stopped. Because the tax credits are a tax expenditure, and the rule for them has already been adopted, it’s not as easy to shut them down. Apparently 18 Republicans asked Speaker Mike Johnson not to touch the tax credits. But who knows?
I got word from a contact that the Solar for All program at the EPA, one that schools have used, may be in danger of losing its funding in the onslaught because the EPA itself holds the money until districts need it.
In general, I’d say the milieu—no matter what happens on the technical aspects of the policies—is a chilled one. Everyone’s looking around wondering what’s happening, what’s going to happen, and what to do about it.
We get news about executive orders and illegal incursions into federal payments systems every day, all as this neofascist right wing enacts its theocratic capitalist political economy of education, promising to do federal incentives for school vouchers wherever possible.
The spectacle is enervating. But we have to fight back!
I’ve seen more takes on the status of elective pay tax credits. But that’s not the program I’ve been most excited about since the Inflation Reduction Act got passed.
The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund was always more promising to me because it’s more of a challenge to the municipal bond market regime in school facilities: giving green banks more money and influence in securing resources for school districts.
When we put the green bank in the underwriter position rather than (or at least alongside) big private banks, a lot of cool things can happen that take steps towards that new political economy of public education: we can reduce or even eliminate public school district indebtedness and reduce their facilities’ carbon emissions at the same time. (I’ve been thinking of calling this two-step move of being debt and carbon free as ‘healthy school finance’.)
The elective pay tax credits just reimburse schools for their green infrastructure expenditures. It accomodates what Daniela Gabor would call the Wall Street consensus in school finance, rather than challenging it.
Green banks have the potential to create a kind of dual power situation and work towards a consensus that way in lieu of proper carrots and sticks, as she’d say.
The green bank strategy is neither accomodating derisking nor proper state discipline of green finance. It’s something in between, a good option given the situation we’re in now where anarcho-capitalists working on behalf of theocrats and tech oligarchs are doing state capture.
The other reason this green bank strategy is promising for green school finance organizing is that the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund’s money has already gone out the door. The National Clean Investment Fund, $14 billion of green bank capitalization, was awarded and deposited with three awardees: Climate United, Power Forward Communities, Coalition for Green Capital.
While the new EPA head Lee Zeldin is trying to find ways of clawing back this money, held in a Citibank account, it’s not clear the path he’s going to use to do that. One hopes Citibank holds the line, but you can’t really trust capitalists.
My contact who told me about the Solar for All problem told me that these awardees—to their knowledge—haven’t worked with schools yet. Climate United’s deadline for its first round of grant applications passed on January, 24th. But hopefully it’s not the last round.
But Coalition for Green Capital is running a program for municipalities with a deadline of March 5. Check it out!
I think green schools organizers should orient towards targeting these groups in their campaigns. Or start bonding for the common good.
Rather than waiting and letting the chilling effect of the chaotic authoritarianism slow things down, it makes more sense to push these organizations to work with public school districts.
It’s a more public financing option in any case, and these institutions will be way more friendly to left group questions/demands I think.