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Clean Energy Capital
Clean Energy Capital is an investment bank that advises water, energy and infrastructure clients with a core focus on project finance and public-private...
Clean Energy Capital
Clean Energy Capital is an investment bank that advises water, energy and infrastructure clients with a core focus on project finance and public-private partnerships. Since it was founded in 2008, Clean Energy Capital has helped clients raise more than $16 billion in project financing, and has received deal-of-the-year awards from Project Finance, The Bond Buyer, and Global Water Intelligence.
General information
Firm type
Private Equity
Year founded
2019
AUM
Undisclosed
Location
Region
North America
Country
United States
City
Tucson
Corporate office
Tucson, AZ, United States
Additional offices
France · India
Principals
Jean-Louis Kindler
CEO
Sector focus
Frequently asked questions
Who runs investment and operational decisions at Clean Energy Capital?
Jean-Louis Kindler serves as CEO and leads both the parent company, Clean Energy Enterprises, and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Ways2H. The firm consolidates strategic, investment, and operational authority under Kindler, with no additional named principals publicly disclosed. This concentrated leadership structure aligns with the firm's identity as an owner-operator rather than a distributed investment committee model.
How does Clean Energy Capital's model differ from a traditional infrastructure or energy private equity fund?
Clean Energy Capital does not operate as a conventional private equity fund with limited partners. The firm builds, owns, and operates waste-to-value production assets through a corporate operating-company structure, with its subsidiary Ways2H serving as the engineering and system-sales arm. This direct-build model exposes the firm to single-project concentration risks that a diversified fund would typically mitigate, but it allows full control over technology deployment and product economics.
What is the RefHynery system, and what are its core economics?
The RefHynery is Ways2H's proprietary modular system that converts unsorted waste streams — including plastics, municipal solid waste, and biomass — into clean hydrogen and solid carbon products. A standard unit processes 25 to 30 tons of waste daily to produce up to three tons of carbon-negative hydrogen, permanently sequestering approximately 44 tons of CO₂ into useful materials like carbonates and graphene. The firm targets hydrogen production costs of $6 to $7 per kilogram at the pump.
Which geographies does Clean Energy Capital actively target?
The firm maintains a headquarters in Tucson, Arizona, and expanded its European presence in 2025 with the creation of Clean Energy Enterprises SAS in France to manage European and other selected markets. It also holds a direct operational presence in India. This tri-regional footprint reflects a strategy of deploying decentralized waste-to-hydrogen systems in markets with both waste elimination challenges and industrial decarbonization mandates.
Does Clean Energy Capital disclose its assets under management or total deployment figures?
Clean Energy Capital does not publicly disclose any assets under management or aggregate capital deployment figures. As an owner-operator that builds projects through a corporate structure rather than raising blind-pool funds, traditional AUM metrics may not capture the firm's true scale. Without a public filing or official disclosure, the total capital base remains unverifiable.
How is Clean Energy Capital's technology differentiated in the waste-to-hydrogen market?
The firm's subsidiary Ways2H employs a proprietary thermochemical conversion process that handles multiple unsorted feedstocks, including plastics and sewage sludge, without requiring pre-sorting — a technical hurdle for competing gasification pathways. The process is self-sustained once initiated, and the modular, decentralized design avoids the infrastructure dependency of large centralized hydrogen plants, targeting smaller communities and industrial clusters directly.
What is the corporate structure between Clean Energy Enterprises and Ways2H?
Clean Energy Enterprises Inc. serves as the parent entity managing the group's intellectual property and overseeing project development. Ways2H functions as a wholly-owned subsidiary focused solely on engineering, building, and selling the RefHynery waste-to-hydrogen systems. This separation centralizes technology ownership while creating a distinct commercial unit that could, in theory, sell systems to third-party operators beyond the parent's own project portfolio.
Profile maintained by Altss using OSINT (open-source intelligence), regulatory filings, licensed data partners, and verified direct submissions. Read the methodology. Last updated: . Continuous refresh with full update cycles at least every 30 days.
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