Tell us about Clean Capital’s business model and how it operates in the community solar space.
We’re about 10 years old, and originally we started buying operating assets and working with a pool of investors over time. Today, we’re backed by Manulife Investment Company. As an IPP, we acquire, develop, and own assets across 26 states and we’re in what’s called the “middle market.” Community solar, commercial and industrial (C&I), behind-the-meter, front-of-the-meter. We serve a lot of manufacturing facilities and municipalities’ power needs.
When you’re doing utility scale, that focuses the company on one big project. We are very dispersed in terms of our projects, which allows us to play in a lot of different places and do things in more manageable chunks. Every state is different. For example, revenue for batteries in New York is different from revenue in Massachusetts, which is way different from Texas. What’s interesting to me about Texas is that it is now one of the fastest-growing solar markets in the US and we’re seeing a lot of deployment. You’re also seeing political leadership that doesn’t support it.
How is demand for distributed generation solar right now?
The conversation around things like tariffs and tax credits is very centralized and we have to think about what’s actually happening at state level, where they’re having to live with the consequences of these federal decisions. We are not a centrally managed economy; the White House can cut a deal on something, but it still has to get permitted at a local level. And people are saying “wait a moment, let’s hold up and decide what’s best in our backyard.”
After passing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act the government immediately started tweeting about energy affordability, because they knew they were causing an affordability crisis by making it harder to bring on new renewables.
Big picture, for a second: you have a scaling energy demand in the US for the first time in decades at the level we’re seeing, and not enough supply to meet that. That delta is causing utilities to increase their rates, and we’re beginning to see those increases on people’s bills. Just as we’re feeling the crunch, instead of adding to the supply this administration is trying to temper down any type of renewables.
The supply-demand issue affects us as well, because it determines where we can develop and the conversations we’re having at a local level. But as the price of electricity is going up, we can come with solid, affordable power that people can take long-term contracts on, providing them with a way to solve the challenges they’re facing from a budgeting perspective, which is a much different conversation from the ones we were having 10 years ago around ESG.
Big bills, ugly prices
During the first half of 2026, utility companies in the United States requested $18.6 billion in electric and gas rate increases, according to a report by US non-profit PowerLines.
The organization’s data showed utilities filed $9.2 billion in rate increase requests during the second quarter of 2026 – enough to potentially affect future bills for more than 56 million customers.
More than two in three consumers reported their electric or gas bills increased in 2026, and more than three in four said they are concerned their bills will keep rising.
Southern states were worst affected, followed by the Midwest, Western and then Northeastern states. Meanwhile, a July 2026 report from Lazard showed renewables remain the lowest-cost new-build generation based on levelized cost of energy (LCOE). Gas generation is set to get more expensive, with wait times for new peaker plants already very long.
Attitudes to solar obviously vary from national to state level, but is it becoming more bipartisan as people see its benefits?
In many states right now, the top issue is electricity pricing and affordability. As we get into this affordability conversation there’s a lot of debate happening at the state level, especially ahead of midterm elections (in November 2026) and presidential elections (in 2028).
For a long time, solar was part of the climate conversation and it was “the right thing to do.” While that’s a nice story to tell, I think now where we have to transition as an industry, it’s talking about the economic impact. We should be talking about jobs, affordability, because that’s where the focus is right now, and I think the industry is adjusting to that both in light of a federal administration that is not friendly to our technology and also recognizing that people don’t understand the difference between utility scale, distributed generation, any of that. All they want to do is plug their phone in and charge it at a reasonable rate in their house.
I gave a tour the other day at one of our sites next to a long-haul trucking facility and there was a guy who worked there sitting at the gate with me. And when he found out I worked in solar, he pulled up his electricity bill on his phone and we started talking about generation, transmission and all that stuff. He said he had no idea what any of that meant three months ago but because his bills are getting outrageous he’s beginning to understand. That’s part of a wider movement.
I heard an interview with [US environmental activist and author] Bill McKibben recently and he has a great framework, which is that solar used to be the Whole Foods of the energy industry and now it’s the Costco. But we could capitalize on this momentum even faster. And as an industry we need to get better at communicating. We need to be in the room with policymakers and educate them. For us, that state-level policy game is really where a lot of the fight is at. It’s how do you permit projects; can you net meter your solar? Is there a community solar program? Being able to understand and navigate that complex space is really challenging and this provides us with a market opportunity.
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