Mercatus Aims to Accelerate Solar Securitizations

NEW YORK, April 21, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Mercatus, Inc., the leading enterprise level investment analysis and decision making platform for solar energy investors, has formally adopted the Solar Access to Public Capital (SAPC) Working Group standard contract documents for both residential and commercial solar. 

The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE)'s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) convened the SAPC working group in 2013 with a mission to enable securitization of solar PV assets and associated cash flows in the marketplace.

"The SAPC public-private initiative provides the credibility and gravitas necessary to drive the establishment of standards needed to accelerate securitization and other financing options necessary to bring residential and commercial solar investment to the next level of scale," said Haresh Patel, CEO of Mercatus.  "We saw a similar initiative in the semiconductor industry called Sematech in the late 1980s and early 1990s that helped ignite the U.S. semiconductor market. We feel SAPC will have a similar impact on the solar industry."

In an effort to advance the availability of capital and financing options for the solar and other distributed energy technologies, which now includes solar securitization, Mercatus will also support the Solar Energy Finance Association (SEFA) in their ongoing efforts to advance the availability of capital and financing options for the solar and renewable energy industries.

"Mercatus has been very instrumental in the SAPC's effort to define risk and credit parameters, especially in helping develop standard C&I risk methodologies for the SAPC's mock rating effort," said John Joshi, a consultant to NREL for the SAPC group, noting that Mercatus will be presenting at an up and coming workgroup meeting May 1, 2014 in New York City on "Risk Analysis for Solar with Applications of Standards and Analytics" as part of its ongoing support of the SAPC effort. 

Since its 2009 inception, Mercatus has assessed over 20GW of commercial and residential solar projects, and currently serves 50% of the distributed generation U.S. solar market. Mercatus counts the industry's top global developers, institutional investors and independent power producers as customers. Subscribers to the Mercatus platform are currently targeting $1.2 billion in dedicated capital deployment for distributed generation solar investments in 2014.

"It's great to see the continuing industry support for the SAPC standards," said Michael Mendelsohn, Senior Financial Analyst at NREL. "Mercatus' contributions on standards development and incorporation into its platform have been extremely helpful and will be essential to help mobilize the industry."

ABOUT MERCATUS

Mercatus is a leading solutions provider for the energy project finance industry, offering its Solar Investment Analysis platform for investors looking to make asset-class portfolio decisions.  Mercatus' new standardized approach to the project aggregation, pooling and syndication of individual projects provides the critical transaction interface between buy and sell sides.  Mercatus is based in Silicon Valley. For more information visit http://www.gomercatus.com.

ABOUT NREL

NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy's primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for DOE by The Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC.Visit NREL online at www.nrel.gov.  For further information contact NREL Public Relations at 303-275-4090.

ABOUT SAPC

SAPC is the Solar Access Public Capital Working Group established in 2013 by NREL via a DOE Grant under the Sunshot Initiative.  SAPC's primary efforts center on the standardization of power purchase agreements, leases, and other documents relevant to residential and commercial deployment, and the development of robust datasets to assess performance and credit-default risk. These activities are designed to allow projects to be grouped into tradable securities. Securitization is expected to attract additional investors to the solar asset class, enabling the industry to tap a larger and more liquid pool of capital than currently available. The working group includes over 200 members firms representing some of the leading organizations in the fields of solar deployment, finance, counsel, and analysis.

For further information contact NREL Public Relations at 303-275-4090.

ABOUT SEFA

The specific purpose of this corporation is to advance the availability of capital and financing options for the solar and renewable energy industries. In furtherance of this purpose, the corporation shall involve stakeholders in the solar, renewable energies and finance industries to promote their common business interests and to improve financing conditions and availability of financing options for solar and other renewable energy generating sources.  For further information contact SEFA Public Relationship at 818-294-3381.

Contact:

Eric Gerard, Email; Tom Nolan, Email, Alycia Randise, Email 212-741-2977

SOURCE Mercatus