Mintz Levin

Renewable Energy Finance Evolves: Corporates Roam Large

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Large corporations are steadily replacing governments and banks in financing renewable energy transport fuels and technologies, helping a popular sector for venture capital and private equity early stage funding cross the infamous development “valley of death” in search of scale.

The renewable energy transportation sector has reached a pivot point in which the needs and criteria of investors is changing ahead of a new race to scale up transformational technologies, a panel of bankers, lawyers and project developers said at the Renewable Energy Transport Forum in Washington, DC this week. The event was hosted by the American Council on Renewable Energy (and this author spoke on one of the conference panels). Keep reading →

 /  Published July 18, 2012 at 2:15 PM

Defending Clean Energy Loan Guarantees

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Obama and business finally agree. The renewable energy business, that is.

“If we are going to compete in the 21st century, we have to dominate cutting edge technologies,” Obama said at a Thursday morning press conference. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 6, 2011 at 3:00 PM

After Solyndra: Renewable Energy Financing 3.0

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To secure financing for renewable energy projects, developers must find investors willing to manage a suite of technological, financial and political risks.

Most technologies in renewable energy are relatively new and untested. On top of that, competition from markets with lower manufacturing costs is pressuring solar panel and wind turbine manufacturing, and fluctuating agricultural and transport fuel prices are adding uncertainty to investments in biofuels. Keep reading →

 /  Published September 20, 2011 at 9:00 AM

Financing That Could Revolutionize Renewables Industry

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Here at Mintz Levin we have been highly successful, along with Stern Brothers/Krieg DeVault/Westar Trade, in assisting in the preparation and receipt of 3 out of 3 client awards of conditional loan guarantee awards (with a 4th to be issued shortly) from the USDA under its Section 9003 loan guarantee program (which we successfully re-wrote working very closely with USDA to make it a workable program and recently have reached the first project closing thereto) in the FY 2010 round under our credit-enhanced bond finance mechanism.

Further, we recently filed more than 50% of the applicants applications in the current FY2011 Section 9003 round. Each round of these applications represents between $1.5 million- $2 billion in total project costs. Keep reading →

 /  Published September 12, 2011 at 6:00 AM

More Than Meets The Eye In Cleantech Funding

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Sometimes the numbers fail to tell the whole story.

According to a recent Ernst & Young LLP analysis based on data from Dow Jones VentureSource, US venture investment in clean technology companies has decreased by 44% over the past year to $1.1 billion. But overall investments may not accurately depict the future of the maturing cleantech market, the study implies. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 5, 2011 at 11:55 AM