Carbon Lighthouse and Generate Capital Close $65 Million in Financing for Commercial Energy Efficiency Projects
New project fund to help more building owners turn energy efficiency savings into guaranteed revenue streams
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Carbon Lighthouse, a clean energy services company, and Generate Capital, a leading financier, owner and operator of distributed energy and resource infrastructure, today announced the close of a $65 million project finance fund to support the rapid growth of Carbon Lighthouse's clean energy and efficiency business. Carbon Lighthouse will use the funds to help more building owners and investors across the United States turn energy waste from existing assets into guaranteed, bankable revenue streams. This is Carbon Lighthouse's third and largest project financing to date.
"This project finance fund enables us to continue providing services to clients with zero out-of-pocket costs, reducing risk even further for our clients," said Brenden Millstein, co-founder and CEO of Carbon Lighthouse. "This allows us to expand our services at an even quicker pace and wider scale, while achieving more and more impact as we move full speed ahead into 2019."
According to Navigant Research, the global market for energy efficient building technologies is expected to grow to $360.6 billion by 2026. Through Efficiency Production, Carbon Lighthouse's unique, data-obsessed clean energy and efficiency approach, commercial real estate owners and operators (including REITs, hotels, schools, and small businesses, among others) can turn the energy savings achieved through their real estate assets into guaranteed revenues that can be leveraged during financial transactions. Carbon Lighthouse can save building owners $0.40 to $0.60 per square foot, boosting net profit by $5 to $10 per square foot when a building is sold. A building owner with a 10 million square foot portfolio can gain $50 million to $100 million in new, bankable profit.
"Generate Capital is laser-focused on finding the innovators who are solving the critical problems of our time and our job is to help these entrepreneurs and executives scale their businesses for both significant impact and profits. We help them develop attractive customer value propositions that start with no upfront capital investment," said Jigar Shah, president and co-founder of Generate Capital.
"Carbon Lighthouse has cracked one of the most challenging but crucial markets for cutting carbon emissions from the built environment: commercial real estate," added Shah. "They have proven that energy efficiency savings can be turned into lease revenue that is widely recognized as good REIT income which has been the largest hurdle to attracting the attention of property owners, hotels, and other building owners. We're excited to help them scale this unique approach to cutting carbon in a lucrative way."
Carbon Lighthouse also today announced a $7.5 million follow-on equity investment to its $27 million strategic growth round closed earlier this year, bringing total investment to $34.5 million. The additional investment came from CEAS Investments, run by Mike Wohl, who invests on behalf of a large single-family office in South Florida.
With its newly raised project finance fund, additional equity investment, and history of profitability, Carbon Lighthouse is poised to enter 2019 in a strong financial position. The company will continue to scale Efficiency Production to make it easy and profitable for more building owners to reduce energy waste.
Carbon Lighthouse has worked in more than 500 buildings across the United States from Hawaii to New York and has eliminated the equivalent of six power plants, with nine more currently under contract. By 2020, Carbon Lighthouse aims to cut the equivalent of 50 power plants, and will be on track to eliminate 50 more every year after that.
ABOUT CARBON LIGHTHOUSE
Carbon Lighthouse is on a mission to stop climate change by making it easy and profitable for building owners to eliminate carbon emissions caused by wasted energy. The company's unique approach to Efficiency Production goes deep into buildings to uncover and continuously correct hidden inefficiencies that add up to meaningful financial value and carbon elimination that lasts. Since 2010, commercial real estate, educational, hospitality and industrial customers nationwide have chosen Carbon Lighthouse to enhance building comfort, increase net operating income and achieve their sustainability goals. For more information, visit http://www.carbonlighthouse.com.
SOURCE Carbon Lighthouse
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