America needs more abundant, reliable, and affordable energy to power our economy and maintain our competitive edge.
At Crux, our mission is to supercharge the clean economy by transforming how capital flows into energy and manufacturing projects. We recently crossed a significant milestone: 100 completed transactions across transferable tax credits, debt, and tax equity. These deals have ranged from hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions of dollars and spanned more than a dozen technology types.
Each transaction has taught us something valuable about what works, what doesn't, and what the market needs to scale efficiently. Here are the key lessons that are shaping how we build the infrastructure for clean energy finance.
The single biggest friction point in clean energy transactions is diligence. It takes too long and costs too much. We've seen deals delayed by weeks or even months as parties exchange dozens of document versions, review hundreds of pages of technical specifications, and navigate complex regulatory requirements. Nearly half of surveyed advisors have seen diligence cause transaction delays.
The traditional approach — where each party conducts their own diligence from scratch, often reviewing the same documents multiple times across different advisors — isn't sustainable for a market that needs to grow five-fold in the next decade. We're addressing this by standardizing diligence processes, creating template checklists validated by leading firms, and building tools that automatically surface missing information and flag inconsistencies.
Today, we’re reshaping how counterparties work together and embedding intelligence into the workflows that power diligence, using AI to extract key terms from massive volumes of unstructured data and make that information usable across teams. Next, we’re building the action layer: AI that doesn’t just interpret information, but summarizes risks, identifies inconsistencies across document versions, and suggests next steps so momentum doesn’t stall and parties are freed to focus on higher-order work.
When intelligence, action, and human expertise work in concert, deals move faster, costs come down, and capital can flow into the projects that need it most.
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One of our most important realizations is that law firms aren't merely advisors in clean energy finance — they're foundational to building scalable market infrastructure. The best firms bring more than legal expertise; they provide market intelligence on regulatory trends, risk assessment frameworks refined across hundreds of deals, and the pattern recognition that turns one-off transactions into repeatable processes.
That's why we've partnered with 40+ leading law firms to co-develop standardized documentation, build AI-powered review tools, and create programs that make high-quality legal support accessible to more market participants. Together, we’re not just streamlining deal execution — we’re modernizing the legal infrastructure for clean energy finance.
Law firms will always play a critical role in the future of clean energy capital markets — not just as advisors, but as experts. That’s why we’ll continue to amplify the expertise of our law firm partners, making their accumulated wisdom available across the market.
Clean energy finance remains frustratingly fragmented. The current process for raising capital is slow, fragmented, and opaque. Developers and manufacturers need to raise multiple types of capital — from initial equity capital to late-stage development capital, construction loans, tax credit or tax equity bridge loans, term loans, and tax equity or tax credit transfers. Financings come from a different group of investors and vary in continuity of data, underwriting standards, and documentation.
In short, there is no “rinse and repeat” capital solution at any stage. Each successive financing requires a deep understanding of financial markets and connectivity to distinct investor networks. Developers and manufacturers expend a great deal of time and energy just trying to find the right investors to talk to for any given financing need.
This fragmentation isn’t just inefficient — it actively prevents market growth. We’ve seen firsthand how centralizing the full capital stack transforms market dynamics. When developers and manufacturers can manage and access investors for all of their financing needs in one place, liquidity increases dramatically and closings happen more efficiently.
Every clean energy transaction involves risk: construction risk, regulatory risk, recapture risk, counterparty risk. What separates successful transactions from failed ones isn't the absence of risk but the quality of intelligence used to assess and price it.
We've built our platform on a foundation of data from $40 billion in transactions, but the real value comes from making this intelligence actionable. When a developer can see comparable pricing for similar projects, when a buyer can benchmark indemnity terms across dozens of deals, when both parties can reference standardized risk matrices, transactions move from speculation to calculation. This shift from opacity to transparency is fundamental to market maturation.
Perhaps our most consistent observation is that transactions with strong advisory teams close faster, price better, and create more value for all parties. But "strong" doesn't just mean prestigious — it means aligned, experienced, and equipped with the right tools.
We've invested heavily in building an expert commercial team that acts as an extension of our clients' capabilities. This team doesn't just facilitate transactions; they educate first-time buyers, help developers optimize their credit structures, and ensure all parties understand both opportunities and obligations. When advisory services are embedded in the platform rather than bolted on, every participant benefits from accumulated market knowledge.
Despite regulatory uncertainty and political headwinds, the clean energy finance market has demonstrated remarkable resilience and creativity. In just two years since transferability began, advanced manufacturing credits went from 0% to 33% of transaction volume in a single year. New technologies like clean hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel are already finding buyers despite limited precedent.
And it’s not just new technology types gaining market traction. Transferable tax credits are spurring more tax equity investments and more innovative tax equity deal structures. Tax equity investment is on track to increase 10–20% in 2025. Hybrid tax equity structures, or T-flips, which are structured to transfer a portion of the tax credits, now make up the majority of tax equity investments.
This adaptability isn't accidental — it's driven by sophisticated market participants who understand both energy markets and financial innovation. The quick adoption of new credit types, the rapid evolution of deal structures, and the market's ability to maintain pricing through political uncertainty all point to a market that's maturing faster than many predicted.
These 100 transactions represent more than business milestones. They're proof points that efficient, liquid markets for clean energy finance are achievable. Each deal has contributed to the standards, tools, and networks that will make the next 100 transactions faster, less expensive, and more certain.
At Crux, we believe project finance can be as efficient as public markets, as transparent as modern software, and as intelligent as the experts who power it. These first 100 transactions have shown us the way forward and are shaping how we build for the next 10,000.
Because if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that the clean economy doesn't need more complexity — it needs better infrastructure. That's what we're building.
Want to be part of the next 100 transactions? Get in touch to learn more about transacting on the Crux platform.
