Let’s be realistic before getting excited—that’s $20B spread out over ten years, so the equiv. of only $2B/year. As the Red Herring article acknowledges in the closing quote from Peter Liu, chief executive of New Resource Bank,

Banking is an $18-trillion market, so it’s still a drop in the bucket, but they’re going in the right direction.

I can’t help but think that this is a $2B dollar ad campaign. Granted, yes, a lot of small businesses are going to get allocated start up money much easier as a result, but what might be a lot more impressive is if BoM put 2B/year toward becoming a greener company themselves; environmental concerns start at home, as I understand it, and that might actually inspire other financial giants to start acting along the same lines.

This pissing and bitching aside, what this ultimately speaks to me, and, I’d imagine to the financial world in general, is that they believe that green banking can actually make money. That’s a big, big deal. This can and should have powerful repercussions, but for the moment I’m holding back from making any predictions on the matter. The hope it suggests is a little high, and real power brokers are notoriously selfish and conservative; I think other banks in a similar position might choose to hang back and see if it actually produces a net gain before jumping in as well.