By Joshua Burd
Solar Landscape has closed on a $600 million financing commitment from First Citizens Bank to help accelerate its pipeline of rooftop solar projects in New Jersey and nationally.
According to the firms, the agreement includes a $350 million three-year revolving credit facility for construction and a $250 million delayed-draw term loan facility with a five-year tenor. It also represents the largest revolving senior debt facility of its kind for commercial rooftop distributed energy, Asbury Park-based Solar Landscape said, citing the need for “speed and scale” as its project velocity increases across multiple markets.
“This financing marks a meaningful evolution in how we fund and scale distributed energy,” said Clayton Avent, the firm’s chief financial officer. “As our pipeline has grown, so has the need for a structure that can keep pace. This facility allows us to deploy capital more efficiently across multiple portfolios and markets, increasing the speed at which we can bring new capacity online.”
Solar Landscape said the facility is anchored by a portfolio of 146 megawatts of community solar assets under construction and in late-stage development in Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland and Minnesota. Its structure, meantime, allows for a broader mix of future portfolios across community solar and so-called front-of-the-meter distributed generation markets, including in Pennsylvania, Virginia and New York.
A syndicate of banks and institutional lenders supported the financing, while First Citizens Bank led the transaction alongside KeyBank National Association and National Bank of Canada, which also served as what’s known as the Green Loan Structuring Agent, the news release said. Atlas, Apterra Infrastructure Capital, Siemens Financial Services Inc. and BankUnited NA served as joint lead arrangers, with Mitsubishi HC Capital America Inc. and Amalgamated Bank also participating in the deal.
“This transaction reflects the continued growth of distributed generation as an asset class,” said Mike Lorusso, head of energy finance for First Citizens Bank. “Solar Landscape has developed a scalable, repeatable model for deploying solar power on commercial real estate. This financing structure is well aligned with the company’s ability to execute at speed across multiple markets.”
Solar Landscape, the leading commercial rooftop solar developer in the United States, noted that the demand for power continues to accelerate with the rise of data centers, electrification and load growth. The firm has also grown exponentially in recent years, leveraging statewide policies that incentivize solar and storage development across commercial and industrial rooftops.
