Leyline secures US$150m for early-stage solar and biogas investments

Renewables investor Leyline Renewable Capital has secured US$150 million financing deal from Newlight Partners, a Soros Fund spin-off, to invest in early-stage solar and other clean energy projects.

Leyline Renewable Capital, which is based in North Carolina, said it will use the funding injection to provide developers with debt and equity financing for projects before they have broken ground.

The company claims to have developed, financed and constructed more than 1GW of utility-scale solar and biogas projects in the US.

“Recently, we invested in a solar portfolio that accelerated the timelines for twenty solar projects,” said Eric Rubinstein, Leyline’s chief financial officer in a release. “We took no corporate equity in the developer and the projects are now on course to be developed three times faster than the developer would have been able to achieve without our capital. That is typical of our value-added approach to investment.”

Mark Longstreth, managing director of Newlight Partners, noted that "as cost-competitive and distributed renewable technologies scale quickly, the developers of these projects are increasingly underserved by traditional financing sources."

Maryland-based Newlight claims to have US$4 billion in capital commodities and assets under management.  Initially the Soros Fund Management’s strategic investment group, it spun off from the family company office October 2018.