Raise Green revolutionizes local investment and development – pv magazine USA
Raise Green is a crowdfunding platform that provides tools and resources for individuals to participate directly in community solar as well as various clean energy deployments.
Sustainable investing has gone mainstream. A 2021 Morgan Stanley survey found that among individual investors, an astounding 99% of millennials and 79% of the general population were interested in sustainable investing. Despite this, only 59% of millennials and 53% of the general population reported being invested in companies or investment funds that seek to have a positive social or environmental impact. While opportunities exist, barriers to adoption remain. Some 71% of respondents were concerned about authenticity or greenwashing, and 58% reported a lack of available financial products that fit their portfolio.
The Raise Green platform combines this desire for action for sustainability with easy access for investors and developers, while maintaining the authenticity that projects have verifiable effects on clean energy and other climate solutions. Franz Hochstrasser, co-founder and CEO of Raise Green, was part of the team that successfully negotiated the Paris Agreement. While he has experience in government, he developed Raise Green to enable everyone to respond directly to climate change.
Recent Raise Green initiatives include solar farms in the Pacific Islands from Mana Pacific, decarbonized plastics from Applied Bioplastics, solar panels for a school in Vermont, and an investment in Brooklyn-based building HVAC retrofit company BlocPower.
This business model is made possible by changes in the US Securities Exchange Commission that allow private equity investments through crowdfunding. Unlike other crowdfunding platforms, green projects can issue promissory notes or equity shares. This democratizes the financing of solar energy and other climate solutions in communities that often struggle to finance themselves through traditional banks and lenders.
Raise Green’s Originator Engine goes beyond funding by providing simple and accessible institutional knowledge about community development of solar energy projects. Developed in partnership with IBM, this software solution provides entrepreneurs with tools and resources from start to finish. During the establishment phase, the project developer is guided through legal obstacles to turn his idea into a real business. During the funding phase, the project is investigated through Raise Green’s crowd investment platform to obtain funding. The platform allows individuals to invest in projects for as little as $100 up front. With solar installers among the fastest growing job groups, Raise Green offers job and training tools for project development.
The future looks bright for Raise Green. In the two years since its foundation, the organization has brought together investors of all types with 18 climate solutions, including shared solar energy, electric car charging, sustainable production and batteries. The company also recently announced the closing of a $1.2 million funding round in partnership with Onyx Renewable Partners, winning Environmental Finance’s Impact Investing Platform of the Year award.
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