Financing Community Clean Energy Projects in 2026

This report by RMI outlines four strategic priorities for 2026 to align community clean energy projects with the requirements of mainstream investors and lenders following a structural shift in 2025 that reduced the availability of federal funding.

• Community clean energy projects often fail to secure financing because they do not fit the "credit box"—the specific criteria used by banks and investors regarding deal size, structure, counterparty credit, and cash flow predictability. This misalignment is particularly severe for projects in new markets, those with smaller deal sizes, or those involving credit-constrained counterparties.
• RMI identifies three primary gaps that prevent clean energy assets from entering the credit box: an affordability gap where projects lack stable cash flows at prices end users can afford; a risk perception gap where investors overweight unfamiliar risks such as performance uncertainty or regulatory exposure; and a market access gap where projects are too small or fragmented to meet the standardization and size needs of secondary markets.
• To address these gaps in 2026, RMI proposes four priorities: fixing the affordability gap through tools like on-bill mechanisms and interest rate buydowns; addressing risk perception via standardized credit enhancements and insurance; closing the market access gap through asset aggregation and warehousing; and resolving ecosystem capacity constraints by investing in subnational financing systems.
• Subnational financing ecosystems are critical for executing these solutions but are currently hindered by a lack of institutional capacity, undercapitalization, and poor coordination. Improving these ecosystems requires a focus on diagnosis and learning, establishing clear institutional roles to avoid duplication, and improving 'capital translation' to connect local activity to national capital markets.

APA

RMI (2026). Financing Community Clean Energy Projects in 2026. https://rmi.org/resources/financing-community-clean-energy-projects-in-2026/

Chicago

RMI. Financing Community Clean Energy Projects in 2026. 2026. https://rmi.org/resources/financing-community-clean-energy-projects-in-2026/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=Financing Community Clean Energy Projects in 2026 |date=2 February 2026 |url=https://rmi.org/resources/financing-community-clean-energy-projects-in-2026/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmi2026financing, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{Financing Community Clean Energy Projects in 2026}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2026}, month = feb, url = {https://rmi.org/resources/financing-community-clean-energy-projects-in-2026/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }