Integrated green and grey infrastructure provides economic and efficient solutions.

Greenleaf Advisors works with partners to advance nature-based solutions to mitigate and adapt to climate change, including green infrastructure for healthy urban communities. Living green roofs, bio-swales, and rain gardens help manage stormwater while providing ecosystem services, including air filtration, wildlife habitat, and reduction of urban heat islands.

Greenleaf works with stakeholders to define and quantify the multiple benefits of nature-based solutions to aid in planning and investment decisions. Integrated design approaches bring opportunities to use infrastructure investment as an opportunity to benefit community health and well being, reduce energy costs, and make communities resilient to extreme weather events and long term climate change trends.

We assisted Environmental Consulting and Technology (ECT) in evaluating market-based approaches to green infrastructure. The public private partnership initiative, led by ECT and funded by the Great Lakes Protection Fund, addressed the investment gap between federal funding for infrastructure and actual infrastructure needs in the Great Lakes basin by evaluating and developing:

• Alternative delivery options, such as Community-based Public-Private Partnerships (CBP3) and stormwater credit trading, that seek out more efficient, cheaper delivery set-ups;
• Alternative finance options, such as Environmental Impact Bonds (EIB), that help meet capital needs upfront, achieve pay-for-performance related savings, and pay for underfunded public services and infrastructure
• Decentralized stormwater management systems called Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) that when properly designed and placed, are cost-effective ways of managing stormwater, improving water quality, and providing aesthetically pleasing solutions.