Green Options

If you have been asking yourself this question, you are not alone.

I’ve been fielding calls for two weeks from clients, friends, you name it. In my quest to come up with answers I cam upon the blog of Chad Moutray, the Chief Economist and Director of Economic Research for the Office of Advocacy at the Small Business Administration. He posted about small business and the stimulus and provided a run-down of what’s in the stimulus package for small businesses:

* $720 million to help support a number of programs at the U.S. Small Business Administration (primarily reducing fees on 7(a) guaranteed loan guarantees);
* $400 million in other support to support economic development and entrepreneurship, particularly in distressed rural, urban, and low-income communities; and
* tax incentives for small businesses, including a continuation of section 179 expensing up to $250,000 on new capital investments, loss carry back for up to five years, a delay in the three percent withholding tax for businesses doing government procurement, and a reduced capital gains tax for small business investors holding stock for five years or more.

Moutray also pointed out that there will be “major investments in infrastructure, broadband, green technologies, home winterization incentives, etc., which will hopefully benefit large and small businesses alike.”

Being interested in small, green businesses, I checked out the two primary agencies that might have have some thing to say: The Environmental Protection Agency and The Department of Energy. It turns out, that according to Enesta Jones in the Press Office at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, one reason its difficult to sort all this out is because agencies that are slated to receive money haven’t decided exactly how they will dispense it.  In other words, the programs that will dispense money have yet to be created. It appears that some chunk of the money will ultimately be dispersed as grants, some through loans and some through procurement (government spending). Additionally, some money will go to states to disperse through their sibling agencies and some with go through through the federal recovery efforts. It looks like we’ll all have to wait and see on the specifics of how exactly a business can obtain funds. But, every government agency that received funds to disperse has been required to issue a press release discussing how their stimulus funds will be spent. So, we have been told a few things:

The DOE press release states that there are 10 areas of funding through DoE:

Yesterday I received another email from small businesses asking for advice on where to get financing so I put together this list.  Three out of the four the resources are recycled Ecopreneurist.com posts.  I simply gathered them in one place:

How To Finance A Green Business by Leah Edwards is an excellent post that covers four potential sources of cash for green businesses: SBA loans, social-venture venture capital funds, Friends-and-Family financing and partnering with a nonprofit organization.

Recently, Leah also posted about Financing for Energy Efficiency Improvements. In that discussion she talked about how some private banks are starting to offer “green loans” for the financing of clean energy systems or energy efficiency improvements. These same banks may offer small business loans for green businesses. Community banks often favor green loans so after you read the post, if it seems like an option check with your community bank.

This is not exactly advance notice, but tomorrow evening the Small Business Administration in San Francisco is offering a free workshop called “Running & Operating a ‘Green’ Business”. The reason I even bother noting such a last-minute event is that the SBA often repeats popular workshops, and it offers similar programs in different cities. You might want to check out the SBA schedule in your area.
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