[T]hree northern New England community development institutions have joined forces to invest a million dollars in a Burlington company that installs solar panels on rooftops and land.
The Flexible Capital Fund of Vermont, Coastal Enterprises of Maine, and the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund invested earlier this month in Encore Renewable Energy, which coordinates renewable energy projects. Encore most recently installed solar panels on the roof of the ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain in Burlington and the University of Vermont Medical Center in Williston. It’s now completing a solar rooftop project in Keene, New Hampshire, and is planning projects in Maine, company officials said.
The Vermont share of the latest investment in Encore is $400,000, said Kelly Nottermann, the communications manager for the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, a nonprofit that manages the operations of the Flexible Capital Fund. Founded in 2011, Flexible Capital is a for-profit impact fund with a dedicated board of managers. Its capital comes from 38 investors in Vermont and elsewhere who support the fund’s work in renewable energy, healthy food systems and communities.
The fund is the only licensed lender in Vermont that provides royalty financing, said Janice St. Onge, the fund’s president. As such, it provides an alternative to equity investment; the fund is repaid from a percentage of revenue over time.
“There can be a period of time where there are no payments, and it’s scaled up as you grow,” St. Onge said. “We don’t need the business to sell to get our money back, and we’re providing a business an alternative to equity investment if they don’t want to give up decision-making.”
St. Onge said she has long followed the work of Encore’s founder and CEO, Chad Farrell, as he served different roles. The company’s work in clean technology and renewable energy, and its status as a B Corporation, fits into the Flexible Capital Fund’s goals of investing in companies that are working on sustainable agriculture and food systems, forest products, and clean technology sectors, she said.
“Chad built a really strong management team and they had a proven ability to execute on the projects they were working on, and had unique skill sets related to hard-to-develop properties,” St. Onge said of the decision to invest in Encore. “And part of our mission is to invest in companies that are mitigating climate change, one of the biggest crises of our time.”
State Sen. Andy Perchlik, D-Washington, a longtime renewable energy advocate, said such financing arrangements are welcome now that changes to net metering have reduced some solar development incentives in Vermont.
“Now that Vermont is slowing down, solar-wise, it is good to see Encore and SunCommon expanding into neighboring states,” Perchlik said. SunCommon is a solar company in Waterbury. “This type of patient capital is good for Vermont in that it makes it less likely that investors will force the company to move or be sold out of state.”
Encore specializes in coordinating solar projects on unused land or on industrial spaces such as rooftops. It has nine employees and contracts with electrical companies for installation of the panels. Blake Sturcke, Encore’s chief financial officer, likened the work to real estate development.
“We effectively create projects,” Sturcke said Wednesday. He said the company identifies sites that are well-suited for projects, identifies and works with electricity purchasers, designs the renewable energy systems, manages the permitting process, acts as general contractor on the solar panel installation, and finds financing.
Encore’s projects tend to be owned either by Encore, large funds that focus on investing in clean energy assets, or utilities.
The latest investment is the Flex Fund’s second in Encore, said St. Onge. Three years ago, the Flex Fund invested $400,000 to help Encore with a regional expansion and to hire more staff for its solar project development.
Encore said in a prepared statement that it has completed 63 projects since the company started in 2007, bringing more than 33 megawatts of renewable energy online. Sturcke said the latest investment will help the company hire a few more people in the coming year.
The power purchasers tend to be municipalities, universities, and hospitals, Sturcke said. They purchase the electricity or the net metering credits. In this way, they can save on their power bills, serve a sustainability mission, and gain the certainty of a locked-in long-term power price through their power purchase agreements, Sturcke said.
