Shorebank: The First 'Green' Bank

Since its founding, ShoreBank has been a progressive-minded bank focused on community development. However, it soon adopted the progressive commitment to environmentalism after founders Ron Grzywinski and Mary Houghton were approached in 1993 by Ecotrust, an environmentally-conscious firm focusing on debt for nature swaps in rainforest countries as well as environmental banking in the Pacific Northwest. The partnership of the two firms led to the establishment of ShoreTrust (now ShoreBank Enterprise Pacific) which provided financing, marketing and management assistance to small businesses in the Pacific coastal rain forest area. From there, the rest of the ShoreBank family eventually followed in adopting the green agenda.

For the entire story chronicling the founding of the bank and its move towards its environmental commitment, you may read Alka Srivastva’s dissertation for Case Western Reserve University here>>>.

From there, it did not take long for ShoreBank to incorporate environmentalism into its mission and formalize its commitment to the green agenda. In 1999, ShoreBank’s board of directors adopted a new conservation and development policy requiring the bank itself to reduce its waste and also encourage its customers to adopt more sustainable practices. The concept of environmental health then assumed its place alongside the goals of community development and profitability to form the “Triple Bottom Line” slogan that the company champions today. As evidence of its own commitment, ShoreBank has even addressed its own carbon emissions by purchasing offsets for 450 metric tons of C02 to offset emissions through 2010.

ShoreBank’s environmental advocacy is now prevalent throughout its dealings, both in how it relates to its domestic banking customers, and in its international development objectives.

Domestically, ShoreBank’s evironmental objectives are readily apparent their website:

How does a banking corporation address environmental issues?

First, by adopting sound conservation principles for its own operations – reducing energy and paper consumption, reducing and recycling its waste and buying products made of recycled materials.

Second, by providing information to its customers that shows how their choices have long-term environmental impact. Homeowners, if they know how, can reduce their electric and gas usage, benefiting their pocketbooks as well as the environment. Businesses, if they know how, can also reduce their energy consumption, waste and potentially their use of toxic chemicals.

Third, by providing financing for physical improvements that benefit the environment. These physical improvements can include building modifications, equipment upgrades and restoring vacant buildings to new economic life. These investments also directly benefit the community by revitalizing its real estate, leading to improved perceptions and higher property values.

ShoreBank has also introduced its EcoDeposits program where customers can directly support the green agenda. From its website:

Like Development Depositssm, EcoDeposits , are market-rate, fully insured deposit accounts. They offer customers the opportunity to support the work of ShoreBank Pacific.

ShoreBank Pacific fulfills its goal of creating a conservation economy in the rainforest of the Pacific Northwest by lending to local companies that use energy efficiently, reduce waste and pollution, and conserve natural resources.

ShoreBank Pacific CEO Dave Williams takes it one step further, actually questioning new borrowers about their green commitment and maintaining a report card:

We put together a program where we analyze what it means to be sustainable, looking at environmental, business, and community issues. One big question is how are you treating your employees? Are you helping them to generate wealth? Are you improving their wealth, using your stock options to help your employees and enhance your business? For environmental issues, we look at how you use water, how you recover water and clean it, how you use energy, if you produce clean energy, how you manage CO2, whether you are you offsetting CO2 that your product produces, if you are using sustainably produced materials.

All of this goes on a scorecard which we use to determine how they are doing. We find some things upon which they can improve, and make those suggestions. In addition, we talk to them annually to see how they are becoming a more sustainable business.

Even more specifically, ShoreBank Pacific has developed a unique loan scoring system based on the Natural Step Framework, a scientific model to facilitate complex sustainability planning. This system evaluates loan applicants in several specific categories ranging from green engineering to landscape conservation, even managing to include the component of “social equity”.

ShoreBank apparently doesn’t just offer its customers the opportunity to go green; it highly encourages them to do it.

ShoreBank has extended its mission of environmental advocacy into the international community as well. ShoreBank is a founding member of the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN). According to GIIN’s website:

The GIIN works to increase dramatically the level and effectiveness of capital that is supporting market-based solutions to social and environmental problems. Our goal is to help foster a coherent impact investing industry that channels investment capital efficiently to accelerate the development of solutions to pressing social and environmental problems.

There seems little question that ShoreBank is deeply committed to environmental globalism. We need look no further than ShoreBank Executive Vice President Jan Piercy, a former college roommate of Hillary Clinton who was appointed to the World Bank while a member of the Clinton administration. While working for the World Bank, she explained how she felt banks could become effective at providing “global public goods” in an article she wrote for a public policy conference it sponsored. Her own words lay claim to her commitment to the green agenda:

We know how to build roads. We know how to build a hospital. But how do we deal with tremendously interconnected problems such as water access and quality, or global warming, the magnitude of which threatens to overwhelm us?

She acknowledges her concern for global warming, but what’s even more enlightening is the way she marries the progressive ideas regarding economic justice with the cause of the environment:

One issue the bank is wrestling with, for example, is whether in the forestry sector, the Bank should stick with an absolute ban on logging in tropical moist forests or — recognizing how much the poor depend on forests for their livelihood — consider selective interventions that allow us to protect the forests but at the same time provide livelihoods for the poor.

So here we see the avenue the environmental cause can be a vehicle in leveling the playing field between the haves and have-nots — and on a global scale.

Finally, while Cap and Trade is not legally mandated, ShoreBank is actively involved in the carbon offset trading market. ShoreBank Pacific is a supporter of YurtCozy, a new international carbon trading website. YurtCozy allows those who feel guilty about their own use of “dirty energy” to voluntarily offset their usage by paying for it. YurtCozy will then will make the funds available in loans through microfinance institutions like ShoreBank to foster international development efforts that produce smaller carbon footprints.

So, where does this leave us as we consider the possibility of ShoreBank receiving a state bailout? Well, as the Washington Times recently acknowledged, recent history has cast grave doubts about the very claims of man-made climate change itself. Therefore, ambitious and expensive measures to address it may need to be reconsidered. However, in the beginning, the bank’s founders chose to pursue its mission in the private sector believing the federal government could not create lasting change. Given that, we have no reason to question the bank’s objectives. However, the potential of a bailout changes the argument. As taxpayers who would fund it, the risks are not just the bank’s, but ours — and we should question what we are paying for, including whether the claims of the green movement justify our tax money. In any case, it is the height of irony that ShoreBank, having predicated its operations on disavowing government solutions, now seeks a government solution to save it.