USA – BlocPower, a Brooklyn-based climate tech startup, raised $63m in Series A funding round.
The round, which was comprised of $55m in debt, and $8m in equity), was led by American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact, AccelR8 and The Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group, with participation from Kapor Capital, Elemental Excelerator, CityRock Venture Partners, The Schmidt Family Foundation and Salesforce Ventures. To date, the company has raised $68m from early anchor investors, including Kapor Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, MaC Venture Capital, Exelon, New York Ventures of the Empire State Development Corporation, Echoing Green, and The Schmidt Family Foundation. The funding will enable BlocPower to expand and scale its inner-city energy retrofit projects across the U.S., and create jobs.Founded in 2014 by CEO Donnel Baird, BlocPower is a climate technology startup with projects underway in 24 cities. The company uses proprietary software for analysis, leasing, project management, and monitoring of clean energy projects. As a Public Benefit Corporation, BlocPower partners with utilities, government agencies, and building owners to identify unhealthy, energy-wasting buildings to retrofit. Its machine learning platform determines which retrofits will produce the most energy savings at scale and uses the cloud and IoT to gather data and remotely monitor energy consumption.To fund projects, the company created an innovative financing solution that enables small and medium sized building owners to bring energy efficiency improvements to their properties with no out-of-pocket cost. So far, BlocPower has completed retrofits in more than 1,000 buildings in New York City and has projects underway in 24 cities, including Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Oakland. The company will soon offer Environmental Justice Impact Green Bonds to other institutional investors to help finance BlocPower’s future green retrofit projects.22/02/2021
