Testimony of Scott Williamson
Sierra Club District of Columbia Chapter
Oversight Hearing on the DC Green Finance Authority
Committee on Transportation and the Environment
Friday, February 20, 2026
Councilmember Allen, thank you for the opportunity to testify at this oversight hearing. My name is Scott Williamson, and I am a member of the Sierra Club District of Columbia Chapter’s Clean Energy Committee and its Executive Committee. My testimony will specifically address the performance of the Green Finance Authority, or “Green Bank” for short.
As we have for years now, the Sierra Club remains strongly in support of the Green Bank’s mission to drive private investment to clean, efficient, and green building projects in the District. Building energy use represents over 70% of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions, and so the Green Bank’s work in financing green building development goes to the heart of the climate crisis challenge in D.C.
However, too many Green Bank loans continue to facilitate projects that further the city’s dependence on natural gas for heating and hot water. Our city cannot decarbonize, and cannot stop exacerbating the danger of rapid climate change, without ending this dependence on gas. Each new building project that installs gas-powered systems becomes a future hurdle to the city’s, and the world’s, objective of getting off fossil fuels and stabilizing the global climate.
The Green Bank has supported fully electrified projects in the past, and there is great value in its efforts to drive large-scale solar with energy storage, as well as better stormwater management. However, we remain concerned that in many cases, the Green Bank is not involved early enough, or is involved without enough influence, to drive the overall project to the standard necessary to meet the most critical environmental goals. That standard requires non-reliance on gas for heat and water.
More broadly, the combined efforts of our building codes, our DOEE programs, our green building legislation, our clean energy legislation, and our support for a Green Finance Authority should be achieving a wholesale, citywide shift away from gas-powered heat and hot water in all our buildings: municipal, commercial and residential. The Green Bank is completing more and more projects, and putting more and more money to work each year, which is a sign of institutional health. However, improving other aspects of building performance of buildings which continue to be built or retrofitted around gas for heat and hot water must be viewed as not-good-enough going forward.