Clean Energy Trust

Clean Energy Trust (CET) is a Chicago-based non-profit whose mission is to invest in entrepreneurs who are leading the cleantech transformation. CET operates its 501vc® Seed Fund to provide seed capital to the most promising clean energy and sustainable technology startups in the Mid-continent region. To support the growth of its portfolio companies, CET recently developed a Structured Fundraising program to catalyze additional investment from institutional investors, in a sector and region where raising capital is extremely challenging. While CET’s seed investing helps startups achieve some early milestones, the Structured Fundraising program ensures they have capital to scale their businesses.

With support from EDA, CET will improve and expand its Structured Fundraising program. In doing so, CET will engage venture investors and enable CET’s portfolio of early-stage companies to raise additional capital, in order to address the capital gap that exists in the cleantech space. Specifically, this project will enable CET to successfully execute nine Structured Fundraising engagements resulting in a total of at least $45 million of new capital invested into the participating startups. A “successful” engagement is defined as an engagement that results in an investment transaction closing, where the participating startup is receiving a cash investment from one or more investors who have not previously invested in the company.

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