A link to the post on the site for the full post can be found here). Below is also the text. My two cents:

At Energize we have 5 ethos written on the wall. One of those core tenets is “We choose to grow, together”. 2022 was a great year for Energize Ventures and our year-end figures show the early results of the major, deliberate internal investments we are making to better scale and deliver value for our team, our portfolio companies, and our LPs.

We are scaling our team, our value-add methodologies, our approach to impact, and our investment strategies to meet the climate opportunity. Generational firms in climate are being built right now and Energize is motivated to scale with our portfolio and be an enduring investor for decades to come!

Portfolio ⚡️

In 2023, we honed our investment themes at the intersection of software and renewable energy, industrial operations, electrification and mobility, infrastructure resilience, and decarbonization. We grew our climate software portfolio through seven new investments out of our second venture fund:

– $10M Series A in Sourcemap, the enterprise software for end-to-end supply chain visibility

– $50M Series B in NCX, the data-driven forest carbon exchange

– $10M Series A in Handle, the software platform for construction payments and notice management

– $55M Series B in Patch, the platform scaling unified climate action

– $30M Series A+ in Monta, the operating platform powering the EV charging ecosystem

– $22M Series A in SINAI Technologies, the decarbonization intelligence software to measure, analyze, price and reduce emissions

– $25M Series B in  Banyan Infrastructure, the sustainable project finance software platform

We continued supporting our portfolio through four follow-on fundings:

– $200M Series D in Aurora Solar, the cloud-based software transforming solar design, sales and delivery

– $30M Series B extension in TWAICE, the predictive battery analytics software platform

– $66M Series D in Sitetracker, the intelligent deployment operations software for sustainable infrastructure

– $50M Series C in Beekeeper, the all-in-one frontline success platform for the deskless workforce

Firm 🏢

We doubled our headcount throughout the year as we doubled down on our efforts to provide our portfolio with operational and commercial expertise. We welcomed 12 new team members with diverse backgrounds – from seasoned software operators to ESG experts and energy industry professionals. Learn more about our team.

In an important milestone for our firm, we published our first Annual Impact & ESG Report. We believe that by more actively managing our impact and prioritizing ESG issues, we strengthen our firm, add value to our portfolio and help scale the next generation of sustainability leaders. We also became members of VentureESG, Responsible Innovation Labs (RIL) and ESG4VC and signatories of the UN PRI. As we progress in this journey, we’re excited to engage with new partners and collaborators to raise the bar together.

What’s Next? 🔮

We’re excited for the enduring growth we’ve seen so far in 2023 for industries like solar and electric mobility – and for the opportunities this growth can yield for our portfolio of climate software companies. On the firm side, we’re continuing to productize our commercial, operational and impact initiatives to accelerate value creation within our portfolio. We also have some exciting events planned throughout 2023 to convene our climate software network!

Finally, our portfolio companies are hiring! Check out our job board to keep up with the latest openings – 176 as of this writing – across our portfolio and work on the front lines of climate action.

_{This article represents the views of the author and is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be, and should not be construed as, an offer, solicitation or recommendation with respect to any transaction and should not be treated as legal advice, investment advice or tax advice. Readers should not rely upon this information as a substitute for obtaining specific legal or tax advice from their own professional legal or tax advisors. References to specific securities and their issuers are for illustrative purposes only and are not intended and should not be interpreted as recommendations to purchase or sell such securities.  Information is subject to change based on market or other conditions.}

At Energize we have proprietary data sources that reveal the types of assets being deployed within the energy & sustainability movement. We also have the benefit of focus, and our team has been tracking the funds flow of renewables projects for close to 5 years. While utility scale projects capture the headlines and are a major driver in market growth, the number of small-to-mid scale projects has grown at a stunning annual pace. The constituents in that ecosystem (developers, owners, operators, banks, tax underwriters) have grown in parallel as has the complexity of monitoring and optimizing the number of active transactions.

Enter Banyan Infrastructure. Led by Amanda Li and Will Greene, Banyan is the defacto software platform to help manage the project finance ecosystem. For those that know the startup ecosystem, think of Banyan as the Carta for renewables. Energize led the $25M Series B and Juan Muldoon is representing us on the board. And as is common with all of our investments, we also have a board observer…. with Honour Masters taking the seat. Honour has a specific skill set in/around the financial services and technology landscape and she and Juan are going to be powerful partners to the Banyan cofounders. In addition to Juan, we already have our operating team fully engaged with the company. Exciting times ahead.

The Energize team is always looking a few steps ahead and this investment is years of hard work and I am excited for us to partner with the Banyan team for the next stage of their growth.

The press release is here and the Energize “Why We Invested” post is here.

Axios had a good summary and I have pasted that below, as well:

How it works: Banyan Infrastructure uses its customers’ data to analyze potential returns for different projects and recommends different types of financing structures for project developers, CEO Will Greene tells Axios.

Between the lines: Project financing is poised to become another lucrative asset for investors working with sustainable developers.

• Banyan Infrastructure is planning for that shift already, Greene says, with long-term goals to move from a SaaS subscription model to a transaction percentage revenue model down the line.

The bottom line: Billions of dollars in newly available funds will pour into project development over the lifecycle of the IRA, and fintech startups are looking to get a piece of the action.

Yesterday Energize hosted our 5th annual investor day. While these events can be high stress, I enjoy them because they give the team the ability to show our LPs all of the work going on behind the scenes.

The sentiment was positive but cautious. On one hand we have macro concerns and on the other we have a sustainability and renewables market with roaring tailwinds. Execution will drive the best companies to win and will anoint the enduring companies.

At the end of the day portion of our scheduling we took a team photo. I thought it was worth sharing.

We are in the stage of the innovation cycle where capital costs are driving consolidation as investors and customers alike are looking for scale and value. Specifically, big corporates are very focused on moving budget to well capitalized and enduring technology companies and the the tech firms in this pole position are about to be major beneficiaries of this budget consolidation. I believe we are going to see a lot of this M&A within our theme over the next 1-2 years.

Energize has been an investor in DroneDeploy since 2017 and our thesis was reality capture technologies to advance the sustainability markets. We believed that there could be one defacto capture and analytics platform and have witnessed the DroneDeploy team achieve that mission.

Today DroneDeploy announced the acquisition of StructionSite. While DroneDeploy is the leader in aerial capture and increasingly in robotic ground based capture, they were missing the handheld and more indoor capture method. StructionSite brings that technology and customer set to the platform.

This is what the company wrote on LinkedIn:

We could not be more excited to announce our agreement to acquire StructionSite, the leading provider of ground reality capture for the construction industry.

Together, we will create the world’s most complete reality capture platform – enabling users to perform aerial, ground, interior and exterior capture in one integrated solution.

This agreement meets industry demand for and accelerates both DroneDeploy and StructionSite’s roadmaps to build “a single platform to document, inspect and measure the exterior and interior of their assets and infrastructure”.

For more information 👉 https://lnkd.in/d3jnG-5t

It will be exciting to see the new scale of DroneDeploy.

Here at Energize we have our “Ethos” on the wall in our main room… and speak about our core tenants frequently. One of those is “we choose to grow, together”. The implication there is that we could stay relatively small and constrained. But, we want to scale with the space so we can continue to serve our entrepreneurs and LPs as the sustainability industry advances.

Part of that scale means bringing on new talent to help us achieve our goals. This week we formally announced that we added 4 new team members. I have mentioned some of them before on this blog, but worth the aggregate announcement as well!

Energize has built out a portfolio services group, (codename coming out soon!) and made two additional hires. First is Jeff Schmidt, Head of Commercialization. We first met Jeff through DroneDeploy and are very fortunate to have him full-time with us here in Chicago. He helps educate our investment team on all-things revenue and Go-To-Market…. and most importantly is an active advisor to our portfolio on their growth strategies in this area. He is already spending A LOT of time with our emerging companies and it is clear his skillset is truly rare. Jeff is also managing the commercialization relationships between our portfolio and our network.

David Yi and I go way back. I first met David in 2013 when he became the part-time CFO for Choose Energy. We worked together through the exit in 2016 and I have long considered him one of the smartest strategically oriented finance professionals in the Bay area. We have had him work with several of our portfolio companies already to get models/fundraise presentations ready and is the acting CFO for 2-3 of them right now as well. Hiring great finance leadership at the emerging stage is hard and we intend to make this a strength and resource for our portfolio.

On the investment side we added Meredith Breach to the Growth Equity platform. She joins us from Vista Equity and has hit the ground running. Her financial and executive partnership strategy is already paying major dividends. She and Kevin are a powerful duo.

And finally, we hired Jarell Mason as a Senior Associate to our Ventures platform. Jarell is a Chicago Booth MBA graduate and spent time in the traditional energy space prior to getting his MBA. Jarell is very active on our research deep dives already and I have been fortunate to work with him on the cybersecurity and OT ideas. He has a few special projects that we will be announcing soon, as well.

We will continue to add team members to accentuate our strengths and complement our weaknesses. Each of these employees makes Energize and our portfolio better. I am excited to see what they can accomplish.

Energize’s work over the past few quarters came to public attention this week. As a result I was interviewed by Axios Pro Climate around the state of the market. I liked the direct framing of the questions and wanted to share. Axios Pro Climate has quickly become a leader in Climate tech reporting. You can sign up here, if interested.

Here is the post:

This week we’re talking with John Tough, managing partner of Energize Ventures, a Chicago-based VC that focuses on early- and growth-stage companies in climate tech.

Why he matters: Energize had a big week, announcing lead investments in Sitetracker, which has developed management software for critical infrastructure, and Sinai Technologies, a San Francisco-based decarbonization software provider focused on industry. 

What in your view has been the big story in clean energy/climate tech this week?

• The Energy Independence & Security Act initially included parameters to rapidly expand transmission lines and renewables-related interconnection requests in the United States. 
• It now appears that the transmission portion of the bill is off the table, likely impacting both the timelines and unit economics for large-scale renewables projects.

What would you add to the narrative?

• The best renewables firms were already charging forward and not relying on government funding. Renewables developers are taking lessons from the construction technology landscape and adopting digital solutions that help manage the deployment of increasingly distributed assets. 
• Critical-infrastructure-focused software can help deliver and manage the increasing scale, interconnection needs, and network management of solar and wind projects. 

By contrast, what’s going under-noticed?

• An overabundance of decarbonization tools focus on serving the technology landscape, while ironically, asset-heavy and emerging market emitters — where the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions reside — lack access to effective reduction strategies. 

In three-ish words, what change would you make to clean energy/climate-tech investing?

• Cost of capital matters: Renewables and sustainability-focused capital projects have historically been hurt by rising interest rates that are passed through in project finance mechanisms.