Evergrow

#Solar will be the fastest-growing source of electricity in 2024 and 2025. With so many new solar projects coming online, this critical technology is driving major growth in the broader US #renewables market. The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects solar to grow from 4% of total U.S. #electricity generation in 2023, to 5% in 2024, to 7% in 2025. Government incentives, including #cleanenergy tax credits, are one of the main factors behind the rapid expansion of solar capacity. But market forces are also shaping the trend: As electricity becomes more expensive, in part due to rising demand from AI and data centers, more building owners are facing pressure to seek greater energy efficiencies. One obvious place to start is rooftop solar generation, which can drastically reduce energy costs.? We’re to see more solar projects popping up around the country — the benefits go beyond reducing carbon emissions, including cleaner air, less expensive electricity, and a more resilient energy grid.

With the IRA offering 30%-50% subsidies on clean energy projects, REITs and building owners are embracing energy-efficiency upgrades like never before. Join industry leader James Richards, Co-founder and CEO of Evergrow, as he discusses these trends in this brief video: https://hubs.ly/Q02Wy3w00 #FutureofCRE #RealEstate #Sustainability #RenewableEnergy #CommercialBuildings #EnergyEfficiency #Decarbonization #GreenBuildings

?? Sharing an Evergrow success story today! Bramble Farms is a poultry farm in Moorefield, West Virginia that installed a 659 kWdc rooftop #solarenergy system to power the farm with clean energy. @Davis Hill Development partnered with the landowner to develop the project, and DHD worked with Evergrow to successfully finance the project's tax credits. The result? ?? $457,584 in up-front project financing through the sale of #cleanenergy tax credits. We’ll be sharing more of these success stories in the coming months, so stay tuned. [Photo: Newswire]

Two years on, what impact has the IRA had on the clean #energytransition? In August of 2022, President Biden signed into law an ambitious? piece of legislation that made big promises to boost investment in #cleanenergy and climate-change mitigation. Two years on, we can look back and ask: has the IRA delivered on its promises? In short: Yes, it has—and the first two years represent just the beginning of a larger, multi-year transformation. The Clean Investment Monitor has the data: ?? In just two years, we’ve seen $493 billion invested in clean technology and infrastructure — a 71% increase from the previous two-year period. ?? “Clean investment” has been the source of more than 50% of total U.S. private investment growth in the last two years. ?? $43 billion of the total invested has been invested in residential and commercial rooftop solar and other distributed renewables, fuel cells, and battery storage — a 40% increase. The numbers speak for themselves: The IRA is achieving its clean-investment goals. And in the process, it’s helping to shape one of the U.S.’s largest and fastest-growing industries. These are accomplishments to celebrate: Every dollar of clean energy investments puts us one step closer to a cleaner, healthier, and more resilient energy grid. And that’s something we can all agree is a goal worth pursuing. [Source: Clean Investment Monitor — link in comments]

The #cleanenergy sector created 142,000 new jobs in 2023. Clean energy deployment created more than half of new jobs added to the energy sector last year, and clean energy development is growing more than twice as fast as the rest of the energy sector and the U.S. economy as a whole. What’s more: the growth of the clean energy sector isn’t something that benefits only red or blue states. Every single state saw new jobs created in clean energy in 2023. Much of this progress was spurred by the Inflation Reduction Act, which created incentives that have moved the country closer to a cleaner and healthier?energy economy. ? Thanks to provisions in the IRA that encourage the use of union labor, the clean energy energy sector also now has a higher rate of unionized labor (12.4%) than the average rate across the energy sector. The IRA is bringing more jobs to communities across America at the same time that it’s creating a more sustainable and resilient energy grid. In other words: it’s working. Read more in the DOE report linked in comments ??

?? How do solar tax credits work? ?? Tax credits for #solar projects have been around for years, but the majority of taxpayers who could have claimed them? didn’t have high enough tax bills to take advantage of the credits—meaning the incentive wasn’t effective. To speed up the transition to solar, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) did something revolutionary: it made clean energy tax credits transferable. Today, if a business or building owner wants to install solar, they can sell their tax credits to third-party investors for cash, allowing them to finance about a third of project costs up front. This innovation in tax policy created a huge unlocking of capital for real estate investment trusts (REITs) and other owners of smaller, community-scale solar projects. Data from the past two years is clear: The IRA’s updated clean energy incentive is working. The market for transferable energy tax credits is predicted to approach $100 billion per year in transaction volume by about 2030. Many traditional banks—including JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo—are already buying in. With more community-scale projects coming online, more taxpayers are also able to take advantage of tax savings that come with the added benefit of investing in a cleaner, more resilient energy grid. This is great news, but the market’s growth has raised new challenges for small project owners: Large investors typically look for large projects. Every deal done requires due diligence and attracts transaction costs. Why fund ten small projects when you could fund one? This means the smaller yet essential clean energy projects that will make up a distributed grid—such as a rooftop solar project on a local high school or batteries in the basement of a condo building—don’t find buyers as easily. At Evergrow, we’re fixing that problem. We’re using technology to bring down transaction costs and streamline due diligence and transaction execution, unlocking capital for clean energy developers of all sizes. Small projects will make up the backbone of a distributed and more resilient grid. But they need capital to get up and running. Evergrow makes that possible.

2 terawatts: That’s how much solar energy the world is now able to harness into electricity generation per year. According to the Global Solar Council (GSC), it’s enough to power 92 million American households. As reported by Reuters, the GSC’s latest data offers the best and most complete estimate of global power capacity to date because it now includes smaller non–utility scale rooftop installations—like those atop data centers, warehouses, and other commercial buildings—which some governments had previously ignored in their calculations. In many countries, there isn’t a good system of registering those producers. The 2 TW milestone puts the world a quarter of the way to a goal of 8 TW for solar electricity capacity by 2030—part of a larger UN climate goal of achieving 11 TW of renewable energy capacity by that year. What’s exciting about these figures is the impact that rooftop solar can have on global climate goals: Some 40% of the world’s total capacity comes from rooftop installations. At Evergrow, we’re helping these community-scale projects get underway by simplifying and streamlining the process of financing? a clean energy project. Here's the full story from Reuters: https://lnkd.in/eN3fgVng #solar #renewables #UNClimate #cleanenergy #climatetech

It’s been an interesting year for most of us, but a very good one for #solar projects. Solar is the #1 driver of renewable energy production in the U.S. this year, thanks in large part to the IRA’s transferable tax credits for #cleanenergy production. Solar tax credits dominate the tax credit market, making up 35-40% of the total supply. Solar credit prices are also improving, particularly for smaller credits. As the middle of the market continues to grow,? distributed solar projects will make up a larger share of the solar tax credit market going forward. Mid-market projects, which fall between residential and utility scale installations, are crucial to the transition to a cleaner grid. By turning existing commercial buildings (think warehouses, data centers, and apartment buildings) into renewable energy producers, the U.S. can begin to shift toward a more distributed and resilient energy grid—and that’s a good thing for everyone. [Data source: Crux Q3 market update]

While all eyes were on the federal government last week, a number of climate-related state and local ballot initiatives made progress for #cleanenergy, #conservation, and #environmental protection. It’s a nice reminder that while climate action requires all hands on deck, there is power in local action. We highly recommend this article by The Nature Conservancy, which details each of the 12 #climate wins we saw this week. https://lnkd.in/dtB5pWtF

#Renewables now make up a bigger percentage of U.S. #energy production than ever. The EIA forecasts that renewable energy capacity will increase to 25% of all American energy generation by 2025. This represents a big step up from the 15% of U.S. energy production that renewables represented in 2016. The #1 driver of this growth is #solar. The rapid growth in renewables is largely due to the Inflation Reduction Act: By making clean energy tax credits transferable, the IRA provided a critical mechanism for funding small clean energy projects in communities across America—like rooftop solar on residential buildings. We’re encouraged by this progress—and it’s only just the beginning. Data from EIA (link in comments)