NRDC Launches Solar Schools Crowdfunding Campaign

October 31, 2013 |

Over the past few years, the terms 'crowdfunding' or 'kickstarting' have taken off, much like the projects or startup companies that the fundraising campaigns are helping reach fruition. Now a somewhat unlikely organization has jumped into the fray, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which is aiming to install solar on schools as soon as January 2014 through a new Indiegogo campaign.

The campaign seeks to raise $54,000, which will help three to five schools buy and install solar installations. “Our ultimate goal is help every school that wants solar power to get it,” said NRDC Renewable Energy Policy Director Nathanael Greene. “If we can hold fundraisers for field trips and sports teams, we can do the same to get our schools on solar.” He added that switching to solar power helps schools cut their energy costs and allows them to use those funds for other purposes while also reducing the environmental impact of energy use.

NRDC used California’s Firebaugh-Las Deltas United School District as an example. After going solar, the district was able to save roughly $900,000 allowing them to reinstate a music program for 2,300 students. It said students at solar schools also get a chance to see how solar energy works, which can help enrich their science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs.

“Numerous organizations and programs — mainly through utilities — are putting solar panels on schools,” said Jay Orfield, environmental innovation fellow in NRDC’s Center for Market Innovation. Another company, Mosaic, has also launched crowdfunding campaigns to support solar on schools, community centers and others. However, investments in Mosaic’s projects promise a return on investment over time, akin to a bond. Under the Indiegogo campaign, people can contribute as little as $10 to help a school go solar.

“What’s different about our program is that it aims to make solar an option for any school, anywhere, by beginning with local school administrators, parents, teachers, students and communities and giving them the tools to they need to make solar power a reality,” he said.

The campaign will also include a Solar Schools website that will help potential beneficiary schools apply to the program and for contributors to vote to select a school to go solar. The site, which isn’t up yet, will detail state and local rules about installing solar power in a given community. It will also help connect interested parties with solar installers, and local solar organizations.

Other organizations, including The Solar Foundation, Community Power Network, Bonneville Environmental Foundation (Solar 4R Schools), The Green School Alliance and Three Birds Foundation are partnering with NRDC on the campaign.

While it's NRDC’s first crowdfunding campaign, it is far from NRDC’s first efforts to promote solar. In the past, the organization has worked with professional sports and collegiate stadium owners to develop a guidebook to help them go solar. It’s helped stadiums like the Qwest Field and Event Center in Seattle and Chase Field in Phoenix, Ariz. go solar.

The original article was posted on SolarReviews.

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Crowdfunding Coming of Age in Cleantech

With early stage capital for cleantech innovation becoming increasingly scarce, crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo and a new crop of clean/green ones are beginning to emerge as significant sources of funding for selected next-gen clean technologies.

Hurdles remain, particularly for investors seeking returns, but I’m more optimistic about these sites' usefulness to cleantech entrepreneurs than I used to be.

Asked a year ago by a publication about how significant crowdfunding was likely to become in fostering disruptive cleantech innovation, I wasn’t exactly effusive. As GE’s Ecomagination Magazine wrote, “’When it comes to the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars needed for new breakthrough science, that still best comes from institutional investors,’ says Kachan. Kachan says big investors like to get seats on a company’s board and hope to get a sizable chunk of profits. Clearly, someone who plunks down a small pledge on Kickstarter has different motivations.”

Today, a year later, a lot has changed. Cleantech venture investment worldwide in 2012 was two thirds of what it was the year previous, with early stage funding particularly hard hit. And now with good, relevant success stories like Adapteva and BioLite, at least some startups are starting to find today's crowdfunding options emerging as a source for the equivalent of friends & family seed capital. While it’s unlikely to ever produce the millions that institutional or corporate deep pockets will continue to provide, it may — just may — serve entrepreneurs seeking early stage money in a time when early stage money has become harder to come by than ever.

And then there's new, fledgling policy support. In America, today is coincidentally the one-year anniversary of House passage of a bill known as the JOBS Act, which is intended to make it easier for companies to raise money through crowdfunding. Charities have used crowdfunding for years to raise money. The new bill is to streamline the process of companies raising up to $1 million a year in equity, not the simple donations as in today's crowdfunding, but U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations to govern the process are still forthcoming as of this writing. Today, small businesses wanting to raise money from more than 500 investors have to go through a long and often expensive process of registering documents with the SEC.

Barriers to equity investors aside, it’s clear that crowdfunding activity has been ramping up in cleantech. A random smattering of latest developments:

This week, a startup called Velkess launched a Kickstarter campaign looking for $54,000 to build a large prototype of a new type of less expensive flywheel for energy storage. The company seeks to build a large 750-pound prototype of its fiberglass flywheel. The company’s founder has bootstrapped the company to date, but says he needs more money to buy larger magnets needed by the new prototype.Lucid Energy, which produces power from gravity-fed water pipelines, received undetermined financing this week from Israeli venture platform OurCrowd. The Portland, Oregon-based company has commercial traction in Israel, and plans to use the capital to launch a wider roll-out of its technology. OurCrowd is a combined venture capital firm and crowdfunding platform. Lucid was formed in 2007 and has invented an in-pipe turbine that captures energy from fast-moving liquid inside water pipelines without affecting operations.It only has a few weeks to go and is far short of its target, but Potential Difference of Las Vegas is seeking $50,000 through an Indiegogo campaign to produce a first run of fast chargers for consumer electronics devices such as cell phones and tablets. The company’s patented power management algorithms, licensed from Georgia Tech and with applicability to EVs and plug-in hybrids, it says, aim to reduce the charge time of lithium ion battery packs from 30 minutes to 12 minutes.
Entrepreneurs and project developers of all walks are being increasingly drawn to crowdfunding sites. Especially those without a university education, who don’t have government backing, or, for whatever reason, choose not to go traditional venture or debt routes.

And, for clean technology startups, there are now no shortage of sites to cater to them. In addition to Kickstarter, Indiegogo and their general ilk like RocketHub, Seedmatch and Crowdfunder, Greenfunder is a crowdfunding platform for green, sustainable and related projects. Germany-based SunnyCrowd launched late in 2012 to support (mostly) local German renewable energy projects. On its heels, Mosaic has launched its solar crowdfunding site, and within 24 hours, its first four projects sold out. More than 400 investors put up amounts ranging from $25 to $30,000 (the average was nearly $700), for a total investment of more than $313,000. Similarly, SunFunder has introduced a “crowdfunding platform to connect individual investors with quality, vetted, high impact solar businesses working on the ground in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.” Next week at the South by Southwest (SxSW) conference in Austin, social enterprise CarbonStory, based in Singapore, is to formally introduce its crowdfunding platform, where participants are to contribute as little as a few dollars a month to sponsor green projects that have been selected by CarbonStory.

The final remaining barrier, however, is reconciling returns on investment and crowdfunding. There’s more of a provision for, and expectation of, returns for investors in the more-established microlending mechanisms pioneered by Kiva and others than there is in crowdfunding as it's known today.

Because crowdfunding today is essentially a metaphor for “donation,” establishing a mechanism for investor returns as is being attempted via the JOBS Act, and blurring the lines with what we currently know and think of separately as microfinance, will be critical to unlock the vast amounts of private capital waiting to be applied to innovative cleantech innovation and products by you, me, our rich uncles and other private investors seeking returns on our hard-earned money. Only then will crowdfunding really get its day in the clean/green tech sun.

This was originally published here and is republished with permission. Agree? Disagree? Weigh in on our original article.

A former managing director of the Cleantech Group, Dallas Kachan is now managing partner of Kachan & Co., a cleantech research and advisory firm that does business worldwide from San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver. Kachan & Co. staff have been covering, publishing about and helping propel clean technology since 2006. Kachan & Co. offers cleantech research reports, consulting and other services that help accelerate its clients’ success in clean technology. Details at www.kachan.com.

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