🔒With $3B in assets under management, CT-based financier takes green lending program national

Jessica Bailey and Alexandra Cooley realized in the mid-2010s that a state-backed loan program for energy efficiency projects could go nationwide after seeing insatiable interest from borrowers and institutional investors.

To say they were right might have been an understatement.

Since then, the two women have started and sold a business — Green Works Lending, which has since been rebranded as Nuveen Green Capital — and originated more than $3 billion in sustainable commercial real estate financing.

Bailey and Cooley, who both earned master’s degrees at Yale, met in 2012 while originating loans for developers and landlords through a Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) loan program they set up at the Hartford-based Connecticut Green Bank, a quasi-public agency established in 2011 to help finance sustainable commercial development.

C-PACE makes it possible for commercial property owners to obtain low-cost, long-term financing for energy efficiency, water conservation and renewable energy projects.

“It became really clear to both of us that there was a tremendous amount of demand (for C-PACE financing) on the building owner side, and a tremendous market on the investor side,” said Cooley, Nuveen Green Capital’s chief investment officer. “What was missing was a … private-sector platform to bring those two things together across the country, not just in Connecticut.”

Bailey and Cooley co-founded Green Works Lending in 2015 to set up C-PACE lending programs in other states. The financing model has caught on since then, with about 40 states now permitting such loan programs.

That, along with a 2017 decision to begin offering C-PACE-backed securities to institutional investors, has helped fuel the company’s growth.

In 2021, the co-founders sold Greenworks Lending for an undisclosed sum to Nuveen, a Chicago-based asset manager and subsidiary of New York financial planning firm TIAA. Following the deal, the company changed its name to Nuveen Green Capital, which is still led by Bailey (CEO) and Cooley.

The company this year is marking a decade in business and currently has almost 100 employees.

‘Highly attractive’

The C-PACE financing market has grown significantly in recent years. In 2024 alone, over $2.4 billion in C-PACE deals took place, double the volume in 2022, according to PACENation, a nonprofit advocacy group.

The industry has now reached nearly $10 billion in C-PACE transactions since 2009, which has supported over 3,500 clean energy projects, according to PACENation.

C-PACE loans essentially serve as an alternative source of financing for commercial properties. They may be used to finance a variety of green projects, such as installing solar panels, high-efficiency boilers, chillers and HVAC systems at commercial properties and multifamily housing of at least five units.

Individual projects are financed by private capital providers, such as Nuveen as well as traditional banks, according to the C-PACE Alliance, an industry trade group.

The financing is secured with a lien on the commercial property getting the energy-efficiency upgrades. The property owner repays the debt in installments as a line item on their property tax bill.

Alternatively, many states allow the capital provider to directly bill and collect from the property owner, according to the C-PACE Alliance.

A C-PACE loan is attractive to institutional investors, Cooley said, because the interest rate is based on a property’s assessment, allowing for long-term loans at low, fixed interest rates.

The term of the loan, which can be secured with no money down, typically matches the useful life of improvements and/or new construction infrastructure (about 20 to 30 years).

“Institutional investors, like insurance companies and pension funds, really find the highly secure, long-dated nature of the loans to be really attractive,” Cooley said.

So far, Nuveen Green Capital — whose investors include Nuveen, TIAA and insurance companies — has issued 700 C-PACE loans to about 600 developers, Cooley said.

Projects that it has backed have generated a lifetime total carbon reduction of 2.19 million tons, and saved about 623 million total gallons of water, the company said.

‘Leading roles’

Nuveen must execute its loans for Connecticut borrowers through the Connecticut Green Bank because the agency is the state’s C-PACE administrator. The Green Bank ensures that C-PACE loans adhere to state statutes.

While the Green Bank approves the loans, the majority of C-PACE funding in the state — $250 million — has been privately funded, with no funding from the bank required, said Mackey Dykes, the agency’s executive vice president of financing programs.

There has been $150 million worth of C-PACE deals done in Connecticut since 2024, and $380 million worth since 2009, he said.

“The largest projects are for green new construction, and the majority of projects financed are solar installations,” he said.

Prominent Westport-based developer Bruce Becker has used the financing tool. He took out a $7.1 million C-PACE loan to put toward a $54 million adaptive reuse project that included installing a large-scale solar array for his 165-room Hotel Marcel, at 500 Sargent Drive, in New Haven.

“What I like most about C-PACE is that you can add it to an existing capital stack to pay for the cost of on-site renewable energy systems and a wide variety of energy savings and decarbonization measures,” said Becker. “For example, you can finance solar canopies on parking lots, and typically the savings in one’s electric bill is much greater than the debt service of the C-PACE loan.”

Becker also used a $1 million C-PACE loan to help finance the installation of a fuel cell and rooftop solar canopy on top of a 285-unit apartment tower at 777 Main St., in downtown Hartford, opposite the Old State House.

“We are planning to use an additional C-PACE loan at 777 Main for an upgrade and replacement of the fuel cell,” he said.

Becker, who gets his funding through Nuveen Green Capital and other lenders, said C-PACE is a fast-growing financing tool that makes reducing a building’s utility bill and carbon footprint manageable.

Bailey and Cooley have been instrumental in fueling this growth, said Dykes.

“They have played leading roles in transforming it from a niche financing mechanism into a mainstream solution for sustainable commercial real estate projects across the country,” Dykes said.