Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet an innovator and entrepreneur in the banking industry – Henry McKoy. His green vision is to establish proven lending practices that consider not only a commercial applicant’s credit worthiness, but their quantifiable impact on the environment and community.

What are the potential benefits of this program? If the commercial loan is assigned a finance rate relative to expected sustainable performance, then organizations have incentive to structure a business plan that delivers the most efficient sustainable results – thus achieving the lowest lending rate.

Henry’s banking background proves that an organization can become very profitable with an employee-centric and environmentally friendly model. He’s done it before – and he’s taking his experience and contributing it to his network of community banks. The challenge will be establishing a consistent evaluation methodology that values an organization’s contribution to their community (education or hiring programs, for example) as well as environmental stewardship. Given how quickly the market is maturing, this dream will be a reality in the near future.

I'm not the only one who thinks so. Recently, Henry was invited to the White House to represent the work of his bank, Fourth Sector Bancorp, in a brainstorming session with President Obama.

What if all lending institutions applied this “green lens” to commercial loan applicants? It’s hard to underestimate the incredible impact this practice could have on business development and our ability to create a low carbon economy.