Kellie: We’ve each had varied careers in energy. Starting in conventional power from 25-30 years ago, and moving to different realms in renewable energy—Jim and Tim in manufacturing and development at First Solar; Shawn investing in renewables at Arctas and Quinbrook; and me developing and commercializing renewable projects at Pattern. For all of us, the move to investing in and managing a portfolio of companies in energy transition marked a new opportunity to take our collective experiences and relationships to the next level. We really enjoy the challenge of working with high-caliber management teams to execute their strategies. We’re able to leverage our experiences across the renewables landscape and the renewables value chain to add value as partners and Board members.
Kellie: I made the decision in 2002 to move from electricity trading and investment to renewable energy. I began work as a developer with a wind development start-up company. At that time, wind was a relatively new source of electricity, and the owners of the wind company invested their own equity and were quite idealistic. That was my first exposure to combining solving climate issues while creating a valuable business. (That Company was sold to Goldman Sachs at a significant return on investment.) While I had roles in finance and power origination in the interim period, I joined renewable development company Pattern Energy at its inception. Pattern was formed out of Babcock & Brown’s renewable advisory business and is another great example of how solving climate issues (via deployment of wind and solar facilities) can also create great returns for investors. I’m excited to now be using my experience to invest our investors’ capital into portfolio companies that are developing and operating renewable projects that are helping to resolve our country’s climate problems.
Kellie: We see transformation of the energy sector as one of the key enablers of a more sustainable world. Our portfolio companies are tackling this challenge from a number of different angles. Fund I, Triple Oak, Solar Proponent, and Catalyze are focused on building new renewable generation projects to provide clean, sustainable energy to our communities. The influx of intermittent, renewable energy requires balancing for grid stability, which is the thesis behind Jupiter and Broad Reach. Arbor Gas is focused on providing more sustainable fuels to the transportation sector. Fund II is aimed at continuing this approach and tackling sustainability and decarbonization from some additional, new angles. PowerTransitions is redeveloping retiring or retired fossil fuel plants into renew- able energy or energy storage assets. Linea and Parliament are focused on building new renewable generation. Bildmore is enabling more energy transition projects to be built by providing project developers with unique financing that facilitates tax credit transfer transactions. We are in the process of evaluating several other promising investments, as we are consistently looking at new ways to tackle the challenges of a transition to a more sustainable future.
Kellie: Impact is at the core of what we do, not just through decarbonization, but by promoting business practices that account for a variety of project stakeholders. Our Parliament Solar project is a great example of how we encourage our portfolio companies to do business. Once completed, Parliament will be one of the largest solar projects in Texas, producing enough clean, renewable energy to power roughly 140,000 homes. While a great outcome in its own right, we want to ensure that we are stewards of the community and of the environment where we are doing business. We are using local labor. We are facilitating construction of a public park, community garden, and pollinator garden at the site. We believe that being a good partner to the community and steward of the environment creates better, lasting results. That’s why we want to go beyond just the project to ensure that we’re creating strong outcomes for both our limited partners and the communities in which we invest.
Kellie: While our Energy Transition practice is still relatively young, we’ve fortunately been able to establish ourselves as leaders in the space by holding ourselves to high standards and always looking to improve how we do business. Our view toward sustainability coincides strongly with this ethos and permeates through our entire team. We currently have a strong sustainability monitoring framework in place, but we continue to work on ways to strengthen it to not only help us improve our practices but help us make better investment decisions. We continue to implement and adapt policies that focus on sustainable procurement decisions. This not only helps us ensure that our equipment is sourced responsibly, but also reduces the risks of it being subject to tariffs or confiscated by U.S. Customs. We are in the process of strengthening our pre-investment ESG diligence screening to take a more thorough look at project sustainability throughout the project lifecycle. We are looking at land impacts, cultural impacts, biodiversity impacts. On a forward-looking basis, we want to understand how we can build projects that are robust to climate risks. We believe that by integrating sustainability and sustainable business practices into our decision making that we will ultimately make decisions that are better for our investors and the community.
