A Durham company is making multimillion dollar bets on solar energy – and investors are buying into the business model.
Modern Energy recently closed on the $55.6 million Faro Energy Fund, securities filings show. And the financing is targeted at a portfolio company, Faro Energy of Brazil.
Yousef AbuGharbieh, COO of Modern Energy, said the fund “is the financing to support [Faro’s] next phase of growth.”
“Modern really focuses on partnering with the developers of clean energy assets to help scale and grow those businesses,” he said. “So Faro is an example of that.”
Faro plays in what’s known as the distributed solar generation market, and it has sites across 15 Brazilian states and an “ambitious” growth plan, AbuGharbieh said. But it’s just one example of how Modern Energy is putting its money toward the sector. Recently, the firm partnered with Texas-based Industrial Sun, investing $30 million in its launch.
AbuGharbieh said the firm continues to look for investments – both those that grow companies in its portfolio and those that launch new businesses focused on clean energy asset development.
“A lot of our companies are capital intensive,” AbuGharbieh said. “It takes money to build solar farms. It takes money to build assets.”
And investors are buying in. The latest raise for Faro came from 11 investors, according to a securities filing.
The firm also has in its portfolio American Efficient, which is co-located at its headquarters in Durham. American Efficient partners with manufacturers, retailers, contractors and others to develop and manage portfolios of energy efficiency resources.
While the investments aren’t necessarily in Durham, the firm is committed to its hometown he said, noting that co-founders Mark Laabs and Ben Abram moved from California to the Triangle to start and grow the business.
“We’re based here in North Carolina and we love Durham,” AbuGharbieh said.
Laabs and Abram, friends since 2007, founded Modern Energy in 2016, initially as Wylan Energy. In 2017, Abram said the name change comes out of a desire to invest more broadly in emerging energy technologies.
“I think it’s safe to say we are focusing our brand on the modern world, so going forward we are going to call ourselves Modern Energy,” Abram said at the time.