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National Clean Investment Fund Grant Support Letter
Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund - National Clean Investment Fund
Clean Communities Investment Partnership
Community Engagement and Accountability Letter of Support Template
_________________________________
October 2, 2023
Clean Communities Investment Partnership, Inc.
11000 Broken Land Pkwy
Columbia, MD 21044
Re:
Community Engagement and Accountability Letter of Support
Clean Communities Investment Partnership Application
Funding Opportunity EPA-R-HQ-NCIF-23
Dear Mr. Matusiak,
The City Council of Cambridge, Massachusetts is pleased to support the application from Clean
Communities Investment Partnership, Inc. (CCIP) for Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) funding
through the National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF).
CCIP is a collaboration of strong partners— Enterprise Community Partners, Rewiring America, Local
Initiatives Support Corporation, United Way Worldwide and Habitat for Humanity. The coalition is
designed to couple tailored financial products with software solutions and complementary partnerships
that will build demand for single- and multi-family home electrification in low-income communities and
beyond.
The Cambridge City Council embraces equitable access to residential electrification as critical to our own
work. We believe that CCIP presents a detailed and compelling vision to effectively remove barriers,
build markets and help U.S. households (whether they rent or own) at every income level—but
particularly in low-income and disadvantaged communities—afford the transition from fossil fuels to
clean, efficient, and electric appliances, vehicles, solar and battery storage.
The Cambridge City Council’s is to is on record as supporting electrification as a means of reducing our
reliance on fossil fuels and decarbonizing our city as evidenced by many local actions including
leadership work of our Climate Crisis Working Group, recent emissions reductions requirements added to
our Building Energy Use and Disclosure Ordinance, the passing of a Green Jobs Ordinance, the updates
to our Green Building Zoning Ordinance, and the recent launches of programs like Electrify Cambridge
and the BlocPower decarbonization pilot, and as outlined in our Net Zero Action Plan. The work to
accelerate the electrification of all American households—and the CCIP’s approach to achieve that
mission—is in line with our own mission. We know that decarbonization is an essential piece of our
climate fight and we need to couple that effort with creative solutions to develop the funding and
technical support necessary to incentivize this work on a large scale.
We are particularly impressed with the scope of this proposed work, which both reflects an understanding
of many of the systemic barriers to this clean energy transition and smartly addresses them one by
one—from connecting Americans directly to incentives and contractors and organizing households ready
for this transition to spur the market, to providing various financing tools aimed at maximizing
affordability.
The City of Cambridge has entered into discussions with CCIP and has established ongoing conversations
about how the populations we serve will benefit from this combined effort. If awarded, we are prepared to
collaborate with CCIP to organize our community around this generational opportunity to electrify
households and to participate in CCIP’s proposed participatory governance structure alongside other
community leaders.
We view our work at the municipal level as a compact of trust between us and the people we serve. Our
anticipated engagement with CCIP to implement its proposed GGRF-supported programming, tools and
financing solutions is rooted in our shared expectations for accountability to both those we serve and the
taxpayers whose investments must yield progress for people and the planet.
If you have questions about our support for this application for funding from CCIP, please contact the
Cambridge City Council at CityCouncil@cambridgema.gov.
Respectfully submitted,
Cambridge City Council
Councillor Patricia Nolan
Councillor Quinton Zondervan
Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui
Councillor Burhan Azeem
Councillor Dennis J. Carlone
Councillor Marc C. McGovern
Councillor E. Denise Simmons
Councillor Paul F. Toner
Vice Mayor Alanna Mallon