Key Equipment Finance Provides Financing for 16 Community Solar Projects Across Massachusetts with Clean Energy Collective and ENGIE

SUPERIOR, Colo., July 19, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Key Equipment Finance, one of the nation's largest bank-held equipment finance companies and an affiliate of KeyCorp (NYSE: KEY), today announced it has provided financing for 16 community solar projects across Massachusetts for Clean Energy Collective (CEC), the nation's leading community solar solutions provider, and ENGIE, a global energy developer focusing on responsible growth and the challenges of the energy transition to a low-carbon economy.

Using financing from Key Equipment Finance, CEC and ENGIE will own and operate the community solar projects and sell the energy to utilities, creating savings on electric bills for the commercial, municipal, nonprofit and residential customers. The combined CEC and ENGIE projects are adding 22.1 megawatts of clean capacity, which is equivalent to fully offsetting energy for 3,700 residential homes.

"ENGIE and CEC are industry leaders using Key Equipment Finance's financing solutions to bring a broad expansion of community solar to customers across Massachusetts," said Luis Gutierrez, vice president of energy finance for Key Equipment Finance's Energy Solutions team, which provides leases tailored to the energy market. "Customized financing plays a vital role in bringing the benefits of community solar to more customers, which contributes to Key's broader sustainability goals."

The 16 community solar projects in Massachusetts are constructed and interconnected, and will serve customers in the Eversource and National Grid utility territories. They include solar arrays in the towns of Sutton, Williamsburg, Orange, Goshen, Phillipston, Uxbridge, West Bridgewater, Kingston, North Adams, Clarksburg, and Wareham. The economic benefits of these projects will be seen for years to come – including decades of property tax payments in each of the project towns, millions of dollars of construction investment through utilizing local electricians and other contracted specialists to maintain the arrays and the long-term savings, which area businesses and residential customers will receive throughout the duration of the community solar program.

"Key Equipment Finance's partnership has allowed CEC to bring its RooflessSolar™ community solar options to more Massachusetts customers, giving them greater choice in how they meet their power needs," said Tom Sweeney, CEC's president of renewables. "Funding community solar projects can be a very complicated and capital-intensive process, and we are proud to be collaborating with Key Equipment Finance and ENGIE to 'uncomplicate' clean energy access and sustain the growing energy movement in Massachusetts."

The 25-year lifespan of the systems will produce solar energy output equivalent to reducing 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide, planting 1.5 million trees or eliminating 1.1 billion miles of driving.

"Community solar projects enable anyone, including businesses, nonprofits, public entities, residents and even renters to 'go green' and save money with nothing on their roof or property," said Vikram Kulkarni, vice president, ENGIE renewables. "This collaborative project adds much needed renewable energy to the grid while providing the serving utilities with reliable power; ultimately contributing to a lower-carbon future."

To learn more about solar financing solutions, visit www.keyequipmentfinance.com/partner/solar_financing.

About Key Equipment Finance
Key Equipment Finance has been in the equipment finance business for 44 years and is one of the largest bank-based equipment finance providers in the U.S. The company provides tailored equipment lease and finance solutions for commercial clients and government entities. Through its manufacturer and vendor alliances unit, equipment finance programs are developed for manufacturers, distributors and resellers.

Key Equipment Finance's specialty finance group includes a specialty finance lending team, which provides structured facilities to various sectors of the specialty finance market, and a lease capital markets team to support corporations looking to optimize risk and revenue. Headquartered outside Denver, Colorado, Key Equipment Finance manages approximately $12 billion in assets and originates more than $4.5 billion of equipment financing annually. For more information, visit http://www.keyequipmentfinance.com.

About KeyCorp
KeyCorp's roots trace back 190 years to Albany, New York. Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, Key is one of the nation's largest bank-based financial services companies, with assets of approximately $134.5 billion at March 31, 2017.

Key provides deposit, lending, cash management, insurance, and investment services to individuals and businesses in 15 states under the name KeyBank National Association through a network of more than 1,200 branches and more than 1,500 ATMs. Key also provides a broad range of sophisticated corporate and investment banking products, such as merger and acquisition advice, public and private debt and equity, syndications and derivatives to middle market companies in selected industries throughout the United States under the KeyBanc Capital Markets trade name. For more information, visit https://www.key.com/. KeyBank is Member FDIC.

About Clean Energy Collective
Clean Energy Collective (CEC) is the nation's leading developer of community solar solutions. CEC pioneered the model of delivering clean power-generation through medium-scale solar PV facilities accessible to all utility customers. Since establishing the country's first community-owned solar array near El Jebel, Colorado in 2010, CEC has built or has under development more than 175 RooflessSolar™ projects with 32 utility partners across 17 states, serving thousands of customers, and representing more than 400 MW of community solar capacity. CEC is also the leading provider of community solar software and services to the utility, development and financial industries through its Community Solar Platform™. Visit www.cleanenergyco.com for more information.

About ENGIE
With its North American headquarters in Houston, ENGIE manages a range of energy businesses in the United States and Canada, including electricity generation and cogeneration, natural gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) distribution and sales, retail energy sales, and comprehensive services to help customers run their facilities more efficiently and optimize energy use and expense. Nearly 100 percent of the company's power generation portfolio produces no carbon emissions or very few. Nationally, ENGIE is the third-largest non-residential retail electricity supplier, serving customers in 14 markets.  Serving nearly 90,000 accounts with innovative products and services.  Globally, the company is present in 70 countries and employs 153,090 people, including 1,000 researchers in 11 R&D centers. For more information, please visit www.engie-na.com, @ENGIENorthAm, and www.engie.com.

SOURCE Key Equipment Finance

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