Mercatus raises $2M to introduce energy industry credit score

Mercatus announced today that it has raised more than $2 million for the introduction of a credit score for projects in the energy industry.

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The company hopes to increase energy developers’ understanding of what makes a project worthy of receiving capital in the eyes of investors while also decreasing the time and difficulty of finding fundable projects for institutional investors.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company was founded in 2009 as SCS Renewables and is a software solutions provider for the energy finance industry. Since its inception it has enabled $250 million in investments and transactions. It currently serves more than 40 percent of the U.S. commercial and utility solar markets.

According to Caroline Venza, PR spokesperson for Mercatus, the company’s software solutions are aimed at institutional investors who for a long time have found new energy industries either too small or too difficult to consider for serious investment. The company plans on opening up the industry to sources of finance other than angels and venture capitalists and Venza believes that the credit score is a big step towards that goal.

The credit score, a first for the industry, is calculated using eight different criteria that are assembled to create an economic and risk profile for a project. Should a developer want her project to receive a score, she can submit the project to Mercatus and in 48 hours will receive her score. This score is then made visible to both developers and institutional investors in the hopes of attracting investment.

“When talking to investors they called the score a single point of truth because it eliminates human bias,” said Venza.

The $2 million represents the company’s first round of institutional funding and was led by Vision Ridge Partners and included investment from Augment Ventures and Shah Capital.

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