Raise Green is a crowdfunding platform that provides tools and resources for individuals to directly participate in community solar and various clean energy deployments.
December 19, 2022
Sustainable investing has gone mainstream. A 2021 Morgan Stanley survey found that among retail investors, a staggering 99% of millennials and his 79% of the general population are interested in sustainable investing. Despite this, only 59% of millennials and 53% of the general population report currently investing in companies or investment funds that aim to have a positive social or environmental impact. Opportunities exist, but barriers to adoption remain. About 71% of respondents have concerns about reliability and greenwashing, and 58% report a lack of available financial instruments that fit their portfolios.
The Raise Green platform will make this desire for sustainability action easily accessible to investors and developers while maintaining the confidence that projects will have a verifiable impact on clean energy and other climate solutions. Franz Hochstrasser, co-founder and CEO of Raise Green, was part of the team that successfully negotiated the Paris Agreement. With his background in government, he developed Raise Green to enable everyone to directly respond to climate change.
Recent Raise Green initiatives include investment in a Pacific island solar farm by Mana Pacific, decarbonized plastics by Applied Bioplastics, solar panels for a Vermont school, and BlocPower, a Brooklyn-based building HVAC retrofit startup. increase.
This business model is made possible by changes in the US Securities and Exchange Commission that allow private equity investments through crowdfunding. Unlike other crowdfunding platforms, Green Project can issue debt notes or equity stakes. This democratizes financing for community-scale solar and other climate solutions that often struggle to finance through traditional banks and lenders.
Raise Green’s Originator Engine goes beyond fundraising by providing simple, accessible institutional knowledge for community solar project development. Developed in partnership with IBM, this software solution provides entrepreneurs with tools and resources from start to finish. The creation stage allows project developers to overcome legal hurdles and turn their ideas into real business. During the funding stage, projects are vetted and funded through his Raise Green cloud investment platform. The platform allows individuals to invest in projects with as little as $100 upfront. Solar installers are one of the fastest growing professions and Raise Green provides hiring and training tools for project development.
The future of Raise Green is bright. In the two years since its inception, the organization has attracted all types of investors in 18 climate solutions, including community solar, electric vehicle charging, sustainable manufacturing and batteries. The company recently announced that he had completed a $1.2 million seed round of funding in partnership with Onyx Renewable Partners and was awarded Environmental Finance’s Impact Investing Platform of the Year award.
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