Some of the biggest clean energy investors in the US see a bull market ahead, despite the Trump administration’s pushback on the industry and the wind-down of tax credits.
CleanCapital, the country’s number-two operator of commercial-scale solar farms, said this week it had secured a $300 million financing package that will help it increase its capacity 50% in the next 12 months. There’s a rush underway to get solar projects started before they get disqualified for tax credits, CEO Thomas Byrne told Semafor, but even after that window closes the demand for new power is so strong that rising prices will offset the loss of federal subsidies.
That view is shared by the private equity giant Brookfield. In a new paper shared first with Semafor, Gayle Miller, a senior adviser to the firm, argued that “renewables are now the cheapest, fastest and most scalable form of bulk electricity generation in nearly every major market.” The firm raised $30 billion in the last year to invest in renewables, Miller told Semafor, and while it is focused on projects that already have power sales contracts in place, there are plenty of those to go around as renewables plus batteries remain the first choice for tech companies’ AI ambitions. “The offtake agreements are at higher prices than we ever expected,” she said.
Meanwhile, the CEO of Abu Dhabi-based renewables giant Masdar told Semafor that while renewables rollbacks in the US are “not good for business,” the company still has billions to invest, and is looking to pick up struggling US wind and solar assets.