CleanCapital

CleanCapital

CleanCapital was launched in 2015 by Thomas Byrne alongside co-founders Jon Biele and Marc Garrett, initially structured as a specialty finance vehicle for distributed commercial and industrial solar assets. The firm emerged from a gap Byrne observed after the 2008 financial crisis: tax-equity investors and regional banks had retreated from mid-market solar finance, leaving operating projects stranded without institutional buyers. CleanCapital stepped into that void, raising capital from family offices and institutional LPs to acquire, aggregate, and optimize portfolios of operating solar assets across the United States. The firm deploys capital across distributed generation solar, community solar, and battery storage, targeting operating and construction-ready projects in the 1–50 MW range. CleanCapital uses a combination of direct acquisitions, partnership structures with regional developers, and portfolio-level refinancings designed to reduce cost of capital for aggregated assets. The firm has acquired projects from developers including Borrego Solar, where it closed a multi-state portfolio purchase, and has held an ownership stake in a portfolio of New Jersey community solar projects. Geographically, CleanCapital operates across the U.S. Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and select Midwest markets, with a concentration in states with strong renewable portfolio standards. While total deployment is not publicly disclosed, CleanCapital reports having acquired or managed more than 200 MW of solar capacity. The team operates from its New York headquarters. In October 2022, CleanCapital closed a $300 million debt facility with Manulife Investment Management, signaling an expansion of its financing toolkit beyond pure equity acquisitions and into structured warehouse lending for its growing project pipeline. The firm has also partnered with CarVal Investors on joint acquisition vehicles. CleanCapital differentiates itself through its technology platform, a proprietary asset-management and underwriting system designed to evaluate and monitor distributed solar projects at scale. Unlike traditional infrastructure funds that focus on utility-scale developments, CleanCapital targets operating mid-market assets and aggregates them into portfolios large enough to attract institutional refinancing — a roll-up model adapted to the specific regulatory and tax-equity complexities of U.S. renewables. The firm refers to this approach as its 'CleanCapital Platform,' a data-driven engine for acquisition, optimization, and portfolio management that other yield-seeking clean-energy managers do not replicate at the same volume in the distributed generation segment.