CleanCapital announced today a first-of-its-kind clean energy financing opportunity. The company closed its first offering in which individual private investors are able to invest directly into a diversified portfolio of solar projects. CleanCapital received funding from John Hancock Life Insurance Company, which invested senior debt into the $21 million portfolio of 15 solar projects in 7 states.

“This is an exciting time for CleanCapital and a turning point for clean energy investing, as we demonstrate to the market a more efficient process for solar developers to quickly exit their existing distributed generation portfolios,” said Jon Powers, Co-Founder of CleanCapital. “We are pleased to have John Hancock’s support because of their long history of financing in the renewable energy space.”

Historically, clean energy finance has been limited to institutional investors, large banks, private equity firms, and tax equity investors. CleanCapital changes that, and allows more people to have access to these lucrative investments. The CleanCapital strategy is about long term investing and maximizing existing cash flowing assets.

CleanCapital’s investment platform identifies, screens and manages clean energy projects for investors. The team manages the entire process—from sourcing projects to underwriting and evaluating each project. Once the project is onboarded, CleanCapital actively monitors the investment in real-time and distributes proceeds to investors. By eliminating typical transaction barriers and making capital more accessible, we’re accelerating clean energy growth worldwide.

“Solar project investing offers the opportunity to invest in clean and renewable sources of energy with predictable cash flows each year. CleanCapital provides high quality investment opportunities with long term power contracts,” said Scott Kushner, Director, Power & Infrastructure at John Hancock.

The portfolio is a mixture of ground-mounted and roof-top solar systems that provide electricity to school districts, universities, and large enterprises. The CleanCapital-John Hancock financing enables large institutional investors to make high impact and high yield investments in clean energy channels.

“The solar projects are a win-win for our school district, not only are we making a positive contribution to the community by transitioning to renewable energy, the schools are receiving free solar power and using technical performance data from these systems to enhance classroom learning,” said Richard Steinbrugge, the Executive Administrator for Facilities, Beaverton School District. “The CleanCapital team made the acquisition of the investor-financed solar projects located on three schools in our district frictionless. I am looking forward to working closely with them in the future.”

This is the first in a series of offerings CleanCapital will roll out this year, as the company already has over $100 million in operating distributed generation solar projects in the pipeline for future investments. Learn more about investing in clean energy here.