This week, the Joe Biden administration announced that $20 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act, the 2022 climate law, will go to eight nonprofits around the country to fund clean energy projects.

These nonprofits will effectively act as “green banks” and use this federal funding to offer grants and loans for clean energy projects in their communities. The idea is to attract additional private investment for those projects in the process.

At least 70% of this funding is going to clean energy projects in low-income and disadvantaged communities.

“These are communities with underinvested in infrastructure that haven’t had access to cheap solar, cheap wind, cheap storage,” said Melissa Lott at Columbia University’s Climate School.

This money could go to individuals and to big projects intended to benefit whole towns, Lott noted. “These could be community solar, local developments. It also could be heat pumps and other types of things that can make homes not just run on clean energy, but also have lower bills.”

By investing $20 billion, David Victor at UC San Diego said that the Biden administration is hoping to attract billions more in private investment.

“You give a combination of grants and loans to local projects, and then because they have that funding by the federal government, they can then go raise additional private funds,” he said.

All that, Victor added, is going to be critical for the clean energy transition.