The Business Council for Sustainable Energy

“Collaborative Capital: The Multiplier Effect for Clean Energy” frames a working forum on coordinating investment across public, private, and philanthropic sectors and addressing systemic clean-energy financing challenges. The program combines plenary discussions, facilitated small-group problem solving, and breakouts. Small-group topics include state policy blueprints, low- and moderate-income financial access, tax-credit monetization, the clean-energy capital stack, virtual power plant valuation, local alignment to reduce soft costs, financing data-center growth, solar finance in low-incentive markets, resilience and outage avoidance, first-of-a-kind project financing, turning small projects into investable portfolios, liquidity for CDFIs and green banks, Indigenous and rural capital access, early-stage geothermal exploration, and utility capital for flexible capacity with equitable benefits. Breakouts address how state and local green banks use public seed funding to attract private lenders; philanthropic impact investing and program-related investments; community ownership and retaining wealth locally; philanthropic guarantees and credit enhancements; financing grid modernization, battery storage, and microgrids in disaster-prone regions; and clean-energy finance amid AI-driven growth. The program also includes innovation spotlights. David Crane, CEO of Generate Capital, gives the opening keynote; Amir Kirkwood, CEO of Justice Climate Fund, gives a keynote; and Elizabeth Mahony, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources, gives the closing keynote. The forum follows the Chatham House Rule, and solicitation of funding is not permitted.

The program focuses on transmission and power markets, bringing together finance, technology, and utility leaders. Sessions include: • “1920s Vision: Is Grid Planning Ready for the Future?” — transmission planning reforms under Order No. 1920, expansion efforts, implementation results, and where transmission is being built. • “Capacity Markets: Diagnosing a Chronic Condition” — whether current energy and capacity-market constructs can be rehabilitated or require an overhaul. • “Power Struggle: Paying for the Grid of the Future” — funding interregional transmission, grid grants, price-collared compensation structures, the Transmission Facilitation Program, a proposed transmission investment tax credit, and transmission’s capacity value. • “Gridmaxxing: ATTs and the Art of Doing More With What You've Got” — deployment of advanced transmission technologies, implementation barriers, line-loss savings, and resilience benefits. • “Cost Allocation: An Immovable Object Meets an Unstoppable Force” — cost allocation for large loads, jurisdictional disputes, co-location and proximate resources, broader grid expansion, curtailable large load, clean energy, and storage. Named speakers include Laura Rauch of MISO; Aftab Khan of PJM; Suzanne Glatz of Glatz Energy Consulting LLC; Katie Siegner of RMI; David Lapp of the Maryland Office of Peoples Council; Evelyn Robinson of MAREC; Jennie Chen of RAP; Joshua Macey of Yale Law School; Madeline Gould Laughlin of Grid United; Brooke Keene of Southwest Power Pool; Zach Zimmerman of Grid Strategies LLC; Theodore Paradise of CTC Global; Georg Rute of Gridraven; Carla Pinzon of Expand Power Technologies, Inc.; Bryn Baker of CEBA; Jeff Bladen of Verrus; Matt Christiansen of Wilson Sonsini; Morgan Sipple of the Data Center Coalition; and Craig Sundstrom of Amazon Web Services.