Two Challenging Renewable Energy Investment Opportunities

Two cleantech entrepreneurs wrote to me in the last couple of hours; one discussed a 30 MW wind farm in Michigan and the other a biogas plant in Poland—both legitimate renewable energy investment opportunities, but both flawed in the same way: the requirement for additional development capital. Projects that aren’t shovel-ready scare investors, and rightfully so.

A great deal of time and money has gone into the wind farm, but it needs an environmental impact report (for about $50K), some other permitting, and the final negotiations on the PPA. What happens if there’s a problem?

The supposed strength of the biogas plant is new law in Poland that will provide an excellent opportunity for biogas projects up to 1 MW to participate in a special basket in the new auction system. But they project a 15% internal rate of return, which doesn’t sound attractive to anyone who lacks a strong level of confidence in the rapidly evolving regulatory environment in Poland—especially considering that there are other hurdles that lie between this project and its actual construction. Needless to say, I don’t know the first thing about any of this, and I can’t promote what I don’t understand.  I’m amused that the fellow refers to himself “the Gordon Gekko of biogas” (see pic above). I admire his confidence, but I’d still have to invest a ton of time into this before I became comfortable, and I’m not willing to do that on my own dime.

Bottom line: there is a ton of money going into projects like these every day, but developers, along with their families and friends, need to have deep enough pockets to get their efforts all the way through the early stages.