Based in the Deep South, HOPE represents the country’s largest credit union and CDFI. After the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022, HOPE identified an opportunity to combine its financial health and wealth mission with a pollution reduction mission. HOPE hired PVG to design its first green financial products and go-to-market strategies around three program categories—solar plus storage, net-zero building, and transportation electrification. After helping HOPE win two Solar for All awards, PVG was retained to implement SFA and Green HOPE at scale.
Green Hope
PVG began its work with HOPE by developing a deep understanding of the energy policies and incentives in HOPE’s five-state footprint. We built data-driven models to estimate cost and emissions savings from technologies like heat pumps, solar, and vehicle electrification. We also conducted interviews with HOPE members to understand market demand, and we examined HOPE’s financial lending volume, staffing plans, and target goals to gauge its organizational capacity.
Based on these combined analyses, we aligned on solar plus storage, net-zero building, and transportation electrification as the first green HOPE foci. We then launched two green HOPE products—a low-interest, consumer-facing EV loan bundled with a home EV charger subsidy as well as a solar pipeline project with HOPE’s commercial lending team.
What Our Clients Are Saying
"We asked HOPE members about new technologies like electric vehicles, heat pumps, solar panels, and batteries. They told us they were excited about the money-saving potential and could imagine a better future with these things. Wanting to meet that demand, we reached out to PVG for support developing our financial products. They stepped right in with domain expertise, quantitative modeling, human-centered design research, and even helped us improve how we work. With PVG, we’re moving quickly to serve this market and strengthen the financial health and wealth of thousands of families.”
PVG helped draft the narrative plan and build the financial models to support HOPE’s Solar for All applications in Arkansas and Mississippi, which focused on three areas—solar leases for single-family homes, construction-period and permanent loans for behind- the-meter multifamily projects, and construction-period loans for community solar projects where allowable. HOPE ultimately won $93M for its Solar for All strategy in Arkansas and $62M for Mississippi.
PVG brought HOPE’s Solar for All strategy to life by building project pipelines for its multifamily and community solar lending projects. We also proposed a new not-yet-in-market solar lease program, and we led a significant amount of external community engagement as well as internal HOPE capacity building.
Impact Achieved
Helped HOPE win two SFA awards for Arkansas and Mississippi, totaling $156 million across both states.
Launched HOPE’s first consumer loan product to market via a low-interest EV loan with EV home charger, targeting $500K in lending.
