Encore Renewable Energy in Burlington lands financing for solar arrays

• Encore Renewable Energy, a Burlington-based company, received $389 million in funding from Brookfield, a Toronto-based investment firm.
• Encore specializes in developing and operating solar arrays and battery energy storage projects.
• The company focuses on mid-sized solar projects, typically covering 15 to 30 acres, with a development pipeline exceeding $1 billion.

A Burlington renewable energy company has secured $389 million in financing from Toronto-based Brookfield, one of the largest investment companies in the world with more than $1 trillion under management.

Chris Clement, chief financial officer of Encore Renewable Energy, told the Burlington Free Press that the commitment by Brookfield helps to “validate” Encore as a leading renewable energy developer and operator, primarily of solar arrays, but also of battery energy storage projects.

“We’re a growing company in the early stages of having established ourselves as a leading independent power producer in the Northeast, and even nationally,” Clement said. “Brookfield helps validate the market view of Encore.”

A $1 billion pipeline of projects averaging about $15 million each

Encore has about 100 projects in its development pipeline, worth more than $1 billion in total, according to Clement. The company’s niche is not large, utility-scale solar arrays, but rather arrays covering 15 to 30 acres, averaging about $15 million each.

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“We’re really good at developing projects, but no one has a perfect track record,” Clement said. “Some will fall away, there’s a constant churn of advancing development, adding sites and building out the pipeline.”

With the support of Brookfield, and Zurich, Switzerland-based SUSI Partners, a majority owner of Encore, Clement said the company will be able to dramatically accelerate its ability to get projects done, even with the uncertainty surrounding the new Trump administration.

“There’s nothing partisan about what we’re doing,” he said. “The large majority of our work takes place in rural areas, where we think we’re a key contributor to economic development, providing landowners, often farmers, with alternative income streams otherwise not available to them.”