The clean energy sector faces an unprecedented moment. Energy demand is rising for the first time in decades, driven by surging manufacturing, electrification, and data center growth. Recent federal policy changes are reshaping clean energy and manufacturing finance. Yet accessing the capital needed to build projects at scale remains a fundamental challenge as developers continue to face gaps between the number of viable projects and the amount of capital and tax capacity available to finance them.
While the US tax equity market represents approximately $28 billion annually, 76% of developers in our recent market survey report that tax equity is either not available or only somewhat available to them. This scarcity creates bottlenecks that slow project development, limit financing options, and ultimately hinder energy deployment when the need is most urgent. Banks and other tax equity investors face limited bandwidth and capacity to execute a scaling volume of transactions.
At the same time, preferred equity has emerged as an increasingly important complement to traditional financing structures. As projects grow larger and more complex, developers need flexible capital that can bridge timing mismatches between development milestones and provide priority returns through fixed or preferred dividends. This financing tool has become essential for developers seeking to optimize their capital stack while maintaining operational control.
We launched Crux in early 2023 with the mission to make clean energy and manufacturing finance more liquid, efficient, and intelligent. We first tackled transferable tax credits, developing the central marketplace and assembling an expert team, before expanding into debt financing earlier this year. We've facilitated more than 90 transactions totaling billions of dollars, ranging in size from hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions of dollars, and spanning more than a dozen technology types.
Our goal has always been to serve as the long-term partner for clean energy and manufacturing project finance. As the market has evolved, both developers and investors have increasingly expressed interest in accessing additional structured investments products in the same place where they transact tax credits and debt.
Today, we're announcing the next evolution of our capital markets solutions: Crux's tax and preferred equity solutions. Through this new offering, we will help developers raise capital and support investors in deploying billions of dollars of tax and preferred equity annually.
Tax equity has traditionally been highly concentrated among a handful of institutions; meanwhile, preferred equity remains decentralized across private channels. The challenge isn't just scarcity — it's fragmentation. Today's financing landscape forces developers to navigate separate markets for each type of capital they need, with different investors and tax credit buyers, processes, and timelines for each.
This fragmented approach leaves developers uncertain about their options and facing lengthy capital-raising processes that slow project development. As policy continues evolving and energy demand rises, project developers and investors need clarity, optionality, and execution certainty.
Crux's structured investment solutions support developers, corporate finance teams, and financial institutions through an integrated offering that streamlines traditionally complex processes. In the future, our technology platform — which has already streamlined transferable tax credit transactions and debt financing — will provide the foundation for bringing similar workflow efficiencies to structured investment processes.
Project sponsors no longer need to start from zero with each capital raise, juggling multiple manual processes with limited continuity. Our integrated approach means developers can model and optimize their capital stack across tax equity, preferred equity, tax credit transfers, and debt with a single partner.
We provide access to a wide range of investment structures tailored to specific project characteristics, including hybrid tax equity that combines traditional partnership benefits with investment-grade tax credit backstops. As a leading facilitator of transferable tax credit transactions, Crux is uniquely positioned to structure these hybrid deals, seamlessly integrating tax equity investments with credit sales through our established offering and network.
Our customized deal structures offer placed-in-service flexibility, retained or transferable credits, and liquidity aligned to development milestones. Most importantly, developers can transact on fair and transparent terms without the traditional complexity that has made structured financing expensive and difficult to access.
Corporate tax teams face a fundamental challenge: navigating unpredictable tax liability determination while accessing increasingly competitive clean energy investments. In just four months, Crux has built a $6.5+ billion pipeline of institutional-quality clean energy projects, giving corporate investors access to a rapidly expanding network of qualified developer opportunities. Investment opportunities include hybrid tax equity approaches, with investors benefiting from Crux’s central platform for transferable tax credit transactions.
Crux provides single- and multi-investor fund structures that are fully underwritten and managed by our team. We can also co-invest alongside our investors, helping align interests and reinforcing fund quality and oversight.
Corporate teams can close deals confidently with minimal internal burden through our full-service execution support. They benefit from partnering with an expert team while gaining opportunities to co-invest alongside banks, syndicators, and other institutional investors.
The growth in project scale and market demand has created new partnership opportunities. As clean energy projects grow larger and more complex, even the most established financial institutions face capacity constraints and seek co-investment partners to service more developers and compete for larger deals. Crux works alongside these institutions to help them scale — whether by structuring syndicated and co-invested tax equity deals, supporting execution, or facilitating tax credit distribution. Our goal is to increase total market capacity, not compete with the partners who have built it.
Our financial institution partners can also integrate additional products like loans and tax credit sales through our platform, creating opportunities for enhanced monetization across multiple asset classes.
In the future, our platform's workflow automation and data-management capabilities will enable institutional partners to deploy capital more efficiently while maintaining the rigorous due diligence standards required for their investment mandates.
Central to this expansion is our partnership with Yonette McLean, who brings more than 25 years of banking industry experience, including 23 years at RBC, where she helped build one of the market’s largest clean energy tax equity syndication practices.
Our investments team in aggregate has closed more than $20 billion of tax equity and $10 billion of tax credit transfer transactions across their careers.
Our team’s expertise spans multiple policy cycles and market evolutions, providing crucial perspectives on how tax equity markets adapt to changing conditions. In the months leading up to launch, we have aggregated more than $6.5 billion in active, geographically diversified pipeline and have signed $300 million in term sheets across multiple deals.
This expansion reinforces our broader vision: serving as the long-term partner across the full financing lifecycle of clean energy projects. Over time, we will expand our tools to remove complexities in the tax equity process the same way we have brought efficiency, liquidity, and intelligence to debt transactions and tax credit transfers.
With tax and preferred equity integrated into our offerings, we're delivering what the energy market has needed: unified financing solutions backed by professionals who understand how capital moves in practice. As markets grow more complex and capital needs more urgent, our integrated approach provides the clarity, support, and execution certainty all participants require.
To learn more about our tax and preferred equity solutions, get in touch today.
Legal Disclaimer: Securities are offered through Finalis Securities LLC (https://www.finalis.com/) Member FINRA (www.finra.org) / SIPC (www.sipc.org). Crux Climate, LLC, a privately held Delaware limited liability company (“Crux”), is not a registered broker-dealer, and Finalis Securities LLC and Crux are separate, unaffiliated entities. cruxclimate.com (the "Crux Website") is a website operated by Crux. Crux is a capital markets platform for the clean economy. Any information relating to securities or securities transactions in this release or on the Crux Website is for informational and educational purposes only, is not an offer, solicitation, recommendation, or commitment for any such transaction or to buy or sell any security or other financial product, and is not intended as tax, legal or investment advice or as a confirmation of any such transaction. Products and services on this website may not be available for residents of certain jurisdictions. You should consult with your own tax, legal, and financial professionals for your specific situation. Please consult with a Finalis Securities’ registered representative regarding any product or service for securities in question and for further information. Investments involve risk and are not guaranteed to appreciate. Any market price, indicative value, estimate, view, opinion, data, or other information herein is not warranted as to completeness or accuracy, is subject to change without notice, and Crux along with Finalis Securities LLC accepts no liability for its use or to update it or keep it current. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Finalis Securities, LLC. For more information on risks related to clean energy financing transactions, please see our terms of service (https://www.cruxclimate.com/terms-of-service).
