On September 23, 2025, the Montgomery County Green Bank (MCGB), in partnership with PRE Collective, AEI Consultants, and Quantified Ventures, brought a hyperlocal climate-finance lens to the global stage at New York Climate Week with Resilience as an Asset Class: The Role of Local Climate Finance to Close the Resilience Investment Gap. Amid more than a thousand Climate Week events, our emphasis on practical, on-the-ground tools resonated with attendees and industry leaders, earning recognition as an event to watch (Forbes Article).

Introducing PPNZ and the Resilience Dedicated Fund

The session introduced Protecting the Path to Net-Zero (PPNZ), MCGB’s resilience strategy for channeling private capital into community-level adaptation. At its core is the Resilience Dedicated Fund, a first-of-its-kind instrument that blends the agility of a line of credit with the mission focus of a loan fund. Structured as a low-interest, revolving facility, it enables affordable housing developers to proactively manage climate risk, reduce long-term operating costs, and improve resident health and well-being.

Why Borrowers Say It Works

Recognized by affordable-housing leaders as an “ideal tool,” the Resilience Dedicated Fund is already in use by local borrowers. As one participant shared: “This facility fills a persistent market gap by financing early-stage and integrated resilience retrofits—proving that climate, housing, health, and equity goals can be advanced together.”

The instrument helps enhance affordability by financing preventive upgrades before crises, shifting the field away from reactive, grant-dependent models toward forward-looking resilience. It supports rapid deployment when projects are ready, holistic project integration, and blended capital stacks, bringing together public, philanthropic, and private sources to accelerate scale.

Technical Assistance That De-Risks Decisions

With embedded technical assistance, the session showed how tools like the ASTM E3429 Property Resilience Assessment (PRA) and standardized frameworks enable evidence-based capital planning, delivering sustainable, healthy, climate-ready housing and clearer inputs for underwriting.

The Takeaway

Green banks are pivotal in designing market-enabling solutions that mobilize capital, catalyze cross-sector collaboration, and reframe resilience as investable and scalable. When resilience is treated as a cash-flow story, hyperlocal projects surface the repayment signals investors need and green banks are uniquely positioned to translate those signals into financeable deals.

What’s Next

With PPNZ, MCGB is proving the model in real time, deploying projects while collecting the data that underwrites repayment. By partnering with affordable-housing owners and developers, PPNZ pairs nature-based interventions with practical housing priorities to reveal measurable cash-flow benefits. As a locally led adaptation initiative, MCGB is inviting investors to help deliver the current pipeline and scale the program.

Stay Connected

Thank you to everyone who joined us in person and online. Your energy made the conversation a powerful step forward for climate resilience finance. Together, we’re redefining what it means to invest in resilience, one community at a time.

Want to learn more or get involved?

Explore our event materials and Resilience Dedicated Fund resources: