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    Truist Bank Supplies Scale Microgrids with $150M Tax Equity Investment to Fund New Projects

    Dec. 19, 2024
    The projects funded by Truist’s investment are planned to be built over 18 months across the country in states such as California, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania.
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    On-site power and community solar developer Scale Microgrids has gained access to another $150 million of investment to support construction of new microgrid projects across the U.S.

    Truist Bank is providing a $150 million tax equity investment in Scale Microgrids. The funding will help Scale finance the construction of microgrids for commercial and industrial customers, as well as support the company’s relatively new move into community solar and battery storage facilities.

    The projects funded by Truist’s investment are planned to be built over 18 months across the country in states such as California, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania.

    “We’re very excited to work with Truist to finance such a diverse portfolio of distributed energy assets with our largest institutional tax equity investment to date,” said Julian Torres, Chief Investment Officer at Scale, in a statement. “This partnership will enable us to efficiently finance our microgrid and community scale projects to meet the increasing power demands of our customers in this new era of load growth and grid constraints.”

    In June, Scale Microgrids and private investor Captona closed a funding round on community solar and microgrid assets in New York and California. The transaction enables the company to participate in new opportunities for monetizing investment tax credits under Section 6418 of the Internal Revenue Code.

    In April, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department issued final regulations for energy tax credit transfers under Section 6418, which was added to the Internal Revenue Code as part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022.

    Previously, clean energy tax credits could only be used by taxpayers that owned the projects generating the credits. Section 6418 created a marketplace for tax credit transfers to third parties, according to legal analysis of the code.

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    The Truist Bank investment is another boost to Scale Microgrids and builds on previous capital infusions. Private equity firm Warburg Pincus made a $300 million equity investment, while KeyBanc Capital Markets and City National Bank are contributing up to $225 million in a project finance debt facility.

    Truist Financial Corp. is one of the nation’s top commercial banks with $523 billion in total assets. Based in North Carolina, Truist recently announced a three-year, $725 million commitment to support and invest in recovery and resiliency projects for the western part of the state devastated by Hurricane Helene.

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    About the Author

    Rod Walton, Managing Editor | Managing Editor

    For Microgrid Knowledge editorial inquiries, please contact Managing Editor Rod Walton at [email protected].

    I’ve spent the last 15 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist. I was an energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World before moving to business-to-business media at PennWell Publishing, which later became Clarion Events, where I covered the electric power industry. I joined Endeavor Business Media in November 2021 to help launch EnergyTech, one of the company’s newest media brands. I joined Microgrid Knowledge in July 2023. 

    I earned my Bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. My career stops include the Moore American, Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, Wagoner Tribune and Tulsa World, all in Oklahoma . I have been married to Laura for the past 33-plus years and we have four children and one adorable granddaughter. We want the energy transition to make their lives better in the future. 

    Microgrid Knowledge and EnergyTech are focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids. The C&I sectors together account for close to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

    Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.

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