SMP 46: Why Brownfields are Ideal Sites for Solar?

Solar Maverick Podcast

Episode Summary

In this episode, Benoy interviews Dan French, the Founder and CEO of Brownfield Listings. Dan discusses opportunity zones and brownfields, explaining how these topics intersect with solar advancement. Dan also discusses his experiences in creating Brownfield Listings and shares his entrepreneurial advice.

Benoy Thanjan

Benoy Thanjan is the Founder and CEO of Reneu Energy, as well as an advisor for several solar startup companies. Reneu Energy is a premier international solar energy consulting firm and developer, and the company focuses on developing commercial and industrial solar, as well as utility-scale solar plus storage projects. The company also sources financing for solar projects and hedges both energy and environmental commodities. Reneu Energy has brokered $27 million in environmental commodity transactions.

Benoy received his first experience in Finance as an intern at D.E. Shaw & Co., which is a global investment firm with 37 billion dollars in investment capital. Before founding Reneu Energy, he was the SREC Trader in the Project Finance Group for SolarCity, which merged with Tesla in 2016. He originated SREC trades with buyers and co-developed their SREC monetization and hedging strategy with the senior management of SolarCity, to move into the east coast markets. Benoy also worked at Vanguard Energy Partners, Ridgewood Renewable Power, and Deloitte & Touche.

Dan French

Dan French is the Founder and CEO of Brownfield Listings. Dan is a trained attorney and transaction expert with domestic and international experience. His U.S. practice has focused on real estate transactions, environmental risk transfer and redevelopment. Long a student of the deal his watchword is ‘due diligence’, which helps explain why Dan has been trusted to lead transaction support initiatives for some of the largest companies in the world. His transactional experience encompasses thousands of properties of all conditions across two dozen states, with more than a billion dollars of property and environmental liability successfully transacted.

He has received an LL.M. in Business Law from Erasmus University in Rotterdam, a J.D. from St. Louis University School of Law, and a B.A. in history from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dan is leading a redevelopment renaissance within the larger real estate revolution—a technological, civic, social and market-based movement lifting the form and function of humanity’s built-environment to new heights, taking the health and wealth of our communities with it. He believes proactive due diligence is the difference in successful real estate transactions and in life.

Insights from this episode:

• Strategies on understanding opportunity zones
• Strategies to understanding brownfields
• Secrets to solar market mixers
• How to make a market when it does not already exist
• Strategies on how brownfields can help the solar industry

Quotes from the show:

“Brownfield listing is a property market place and project marketplace for real estate with reuse challenges. Dan [French] is a trained attorney and transaction expert with domestic and international expertise. His U.S. practice is focused on real estate transactions, environmental risk transactions, and redevelopment.” – Benoy Thanjan, Episode #46

“Solar is one of our biggest segments. We have a tag, or species, in our taxonomy… called brightfield, so you can tag your site as a brightfield, which [tells] the market that you’re interested in pursuing solar development… You can be a greenfield… We have greyfields. It’s a rainbow of opportunities on the property side and professional side.” – Dan French, Episode #46

“We built a great educational program with speakers, public and private sector folks, along the two tracks tilted towards our different segments of the audience. So we had the solar, developer, and vendor track, and then the land owner and community track… and our idea is to coach them up and then throw them in the solar market mixers.” – Dan French, Episode #46

“I think the market mixers are a great idea. I mean as a speaker of the event, meeting with the different land owners, you are really able to build a relationship with them. And you know it’s a lot easier to follow up with them once they’ve met you, and they’re a lot more responsive than say… if it was a cold sort of call or… they received some sort of letter.” – Benoy Thanjan, Episode #46

“A brownfield is a real estate parcel that may or may not be contaminated, so it’s land that has been previously developed. We’re not quite sure what was there before, sometimes you know for sure, but sometimes you don’t. It may have been a factory a hundred years ago.” – Dan French, Episode #46

“If you’re selling commercial real estate or industrial property, you need to undertake an environmental investigation before you buy it, or you may step into the chain of liability. So if you buy a brownfield, and do not do your environmental homework, then you may be partly liable, even if you didn’t actually do the pollution yourself.” – Dan French, Episode #46

“There needed to be a place that you could be in your pajamas at midnight. Like it was really hard! How do we get our environmental liabilities out there in a way that the market can understand? Get in front of a lot of people at once? There was no market, there was no simple place to list in five minutes. That’s what the kernel of Brownfield Listings was, and from that we grew into this ecosystem.” – Dan French, Episode #46

“We’re doing that again [the Opportunity Zone Boot Camp and Pitch Competition] actually, in Newark, New Jersey at NJIT on October 17th. We run on the same format. There is going to be a great educational program in the morning through midafternoon, and then a pitch competition in the early evening, and that reception in the evening we’ll announce the winners.” – Dan French, Episode #46

Resources Mentioned:

Learn more about the Opportunity Zone Boot Camp & Pitch Competition Coming to Newark, New Jersey October 17

Learn more about the National Brownfields Conference Coming to Los Angeles, California December 11-13

Benoy was on webinar with Dan French called Powering up Brightields

Benoy speaks about the Virginia Solar Market and Dan speaks about the opportunity to redevelop brightfields with solar.

Stay Connected:

Benoy Thanjan

Email: [e-mail]

LinkedIn: @bthanjan

Website: https://www.reneuenergy.com

Dan French

Email: [e-mail]

Call: 312-988-0256

Website: https://brownfieldlistings.com/

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