CleanPath closes $800m solar fund

San Francisco-based firm CleanPath has closed an $800 million fund dedicated to solar projects in North America.

The fund will provide both equity and credit to solar developments, and CleanPath will manage two revolving facilities to invest in large-scale projects across the US and Canada, according to a statement.

CleanPath chief executive Matt Cheney said the fund will focus on investments in late-stage projects, though the fund can also consider investments in new construction.

This the first fund that CleanPath has raised, though Cheney and Karin Berardo, CleanPath’s chief financial officer, had previously managed financing for 50 solar projects at investment firm MMA Renewable Ventures, according to a statement. MMA was sold to Spanish renewable energy firm Fotowatio in 2009, and CleanPath now “picks up where MMA left off”, according to the statement.

Cheney said fundraising for CleanPath’s debut fund had taken about a year. The fund’s investors are all publicly listed companies, he added.

Cheney said the fund would favor solar over other forms of renewable energy because CleanPath’s “strategic investors are interested in solar in particular” and because the firm is already “fairly well connected to the North American solar space”. He added that large-scale wind projects in the US are currently “being held back by transmission capacity issues”.

CleanPath has already made investments worth about $10 million, according to Cheney.

Cheney said the fund will not be focused on investments in any single region, though he highlighted California and New Jersey as attractive areas for solar power projects, and added that other US states such as Arizona, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan are opening up to new solar developments.

The fund will focus on investments in projects with capacity of 5 megawatts to more than 100 megawatts, according to a statement.