Earlier this week, mayors and governors of cities from around the world convened in New York for the second C40 Climate Summit. The event was started in 2005 in London with the goal to create long term international collaborations among large cities to cut carbon emissions and encourage action on climate change.

This year, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg hosted the event on behalf of C40 and the Clinton Climate Initiative. Invited were the mayors of select large cities and those of cities on the forefront of environmental issues. And of course, former president Bill Clinton was one of the keynote speakers.

During his speech on Wednesday night, Clinton announced that 16 cities around the world will get financing to give government buildings a green overhaul — to the tune of $5 billion total, all donated from five mega-banks.

On top of that, companies will conduct energy audits of all the buildings to be renovated, complete the “makeovers” and guarantee the energy savings. If buildings are not performing a well as expected, the companies performing the audits will pay the difference or make the necessary changes to ensure savings goals are met.

While this means that many large cities will have very green buildings within a few years, it excludes smaller cities and towns who may have just as much desire to go green, but lack the population necessary to join the exclusive C40. Many of the cities receiving green grants already have green policies and buildings in place, or have enough money to eventually retrofit older buildings. Perhaps this is just another example of the rich getting richer, or should I say, the green getting greener?