9. Calculating Your Impact ROI
Sunwealth’s 2020 Impact Report Highlights Jobs, Savings and Solar Access
By Jess Brooks, Chief Development Officer
In the ninth installment of our Banking on Solar series, we examine the environmental and social impacts of Sunwealth’s 2020 projects and partnerships. To start at the beginning of the series, read Banking on Solar.
Have you ever thought about your portfolio’s impact ROI? What else are your investments doing besides generating financial returns? Sunwealth’s tax equity investors know the answer.
Earlier this month, Sunwealth released our 2020 Impact Report. The report provides investors with a recap of the environmental and social impacts their investment capital has helped create. Among the highlights:
Sunwealth has now invested over $50 million in more than 400 community-based solar projects across 13 states and the District of Columbia.
Our projects are providing clean energy and more than $26 million in lifetime energy savings to our power purchasers – about $.52 of long-term savings for every dollar invested.
We have also supported 474 job years and $44 million in revenues for local solar developers and installers.
We have delivered these “impact returns” without compromising financial metrics: Sunwealth has delivered 24 consecutive quarters of targeted returns to our investors, with no defaults.
Sunwealth looks at the impact returns as part and parcel of our process for “good underwriting.” Like a community bank, we look to partner with organizations and businesses that help to anchor communities: houses of worship, nonprofit social service organizations, affordable housing providers and municipalities. Like a community bank, we recognize that if we deliver meaningful savings to our customers over the life of our power purchase agreements, it helps their bottom lines. Moreover, if buying power or net metering credits from us is less expensive than buying power from their local utility, customers are likely to pay that bill – reducing our risk of defaults. Like a community bank, we are investing for the long-term – building relationships that we expect to endure for decades.
We are building relationships on the project development side as well – partnering with strong, independent solar developers and installers and working with them to grow their businesses. Again, like a community bank, we underwrite our project partners based on the fundamentals – understanding their operating history, their commercial experience, their technical skills and their commitment to community. We create enduring partnerships – working with partners again and again to allow us to mutually learn from the development process and continually implement efficiencies to drive down transaction and development costs and create more value for our power customers, project investors, and development partners.
In a time of unprecedented challenges for small businesses, nonprofit organizations, and municipalities – the burden of which has fallen disproportionately on low-income communities and communities of color – Sunwealth is proud to put shoulder to the wheel with our investors.
Together, we are delivering real economic benefit to underserved markets, partnering with small local businesses to get the work done, and collectively, building a renewable energy future that works for us all. For our community bank tax equity investors, those are returns you can bank on.
Read more about our impact in Sunwealth's 2020 Impact Report.
Learn more about how Sunwealth could put your money to work by reaching out to Darreck Mitchell, Director of Capital Markets at darreck@sunwealth.com.
Jess Brooks is Chief Development Officer at Sunwealth where she helps investors put their money to work building a better clean energy future. When she isn't connecting with investors, she's proud Mom-in-Chief to two boys; she also volunteers with The Carrot Project, Generation Citizen and First Teacher.