Modern Energy invested $30 million in the launch of Industrial Sun, a utility-scale solar developer based in Austin, and its multi-year deployment.
“Modern’s experience developing, aggregating, and marketing assets across multiple technologies and regulatory regimes, along with their track record for building novel development platforms from inception to scale, was important to us in looking for a partner,” says Dan Seif, Industrial Sun’s co-founder. “Modern understands the challenges associated with development. We are confident their world-class operations team will contribute to our success in this competitive environment.”
Industrial Sun is already involved in project development activities. This includes contracting the best locations for assets, securing permits, de-risking and engineering studies, navigating interconnection processes, and securing power offtake arrangements. Modern provides Industrial Sun commercial, operational and capital market support, just as it does for its portfolio development companies.
“This partnership is based on a shared cultural alignment and a long-term orientation, which we believe are necessary to achieve a significant impact on the energy transition,” states Jazib Hasan of Modern Energy. “Today, many developers find themselves with a large and eager universe of buyers ready to purchase and operate portfolios but limited capital to help them build their operation. We act as a bridge between early-stage and operational assets.”
Modern Energy’s transaction was facilitated by Jazib Hazan and Kirk Bedell. Before joining Modern, Bedell spent a decade building clean energy development businesses across the United States – most recently, he established and led the distributed generation development business at Brookfield Asset Management and formerly built and led commercial strategy for General Electric’s distributed solar development business, which Blackrock acquired in 2019.
Before Modern, Hasan raised and invested capital in energy, infrastructure, renewables, and commodities – most recently at Citibank as its head of commodities structured finance and credit solutions. Prior to that, Hasan served in similar executive positions at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (Shell Energy North America) and Deutsche Bank.