Quick Read: What’s New in 2025?

For project owners seeking 100% funding, without initial fees, In3 CAP remains a strong option.  Situations where In3CAP is your best or perhaps only option for securing favorable terms here.  To make qualification easier, we offer four new options for 2025 that may be worth considering.

New In3CAP options for 2025 to bring funding within reach:

1. Cash deposit instead of Standby Letter of Credit — Leverage ~3x cash deposit as Completion Assurance security or check out these practical tips.
2. Lower CAP minimums — minimum investment is normally $25 million, but we temporarily can offer as little as $15 million in total funding per project or portfolio with a minimum 35% cash deposit ($5.25 million). We still prefer projects above ~$75-$200 million.
3. Leverage Senior Debt after securing CAP’s minority Equity: Secure partial CAP funding as equity with available security then let In3 arrange the rest as senior debt. Other techniques include funding and building in multiple tranches, using a bridge loan or hybrids of these. In3 management services can help you sort this out.
4. Land lease-back model provides CAP security: If working in US or Canadian populous markets (top 30-50 cities) use a Ground Lease structure for the necessary security and 100% funding.

See also: In3 client case studies and testimonials

The 2025 Playing Field — what Impact Investors see on the Road Ahead

Stepping back to consider the bigger picture, In3’s role as an impact investor, venture catalyst, and ESG advisors, helping to create a more sustainable and resilient future, has never been more vital. “Sustainable investing identifies unmanaged risks and unlocks investment opportunities in order to safeguard and increase long-term portfolio value,” says Sustainable Investment Forum (SIF). Investors require transparency through clear reporting requirements, the ability to engage the companies they own on financially material issues, and certainty that policymakers will support robust climate action. That remains true regardless of the political landscape.

There are political factions attempting to discredit and distance themselves from DEI — Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Why? Could it be largely a matter of overreach on both sides? More. Common ground in management includes and invites input and takes time to listen because every human has both strengths and blind spots. Recognizing this and applying it to team work gets better, more sustainable results.

A flatter, more inclusive culture is not only more just and safe/secure, yielding higher quality, it happens to be a better, more dignifying and satisfying work environment for those doing the actual work. Hierarchies have their uses, but “command and control” autocracies have gone out the window for modern workplaces, now reserved for emergencies (though best to first “triage” seeming emergencies to avoid blind panic or overreaction). This management style has been disowned by even military and police organizations as less efficient in the long run (more).

When challenged about their “open door policy,” an HR director for a client company that disagrees with this approach recent said to me “I haven’t listened to a single complaint all day.” :>o

Politics Aside

One of the best aspects of working in the private sector is our ability to largely ignore politics. We work with everybody, and although change is inevitable, we can thank long-term relationships and the strong projects that get funded and built for our collective, brighter future. Most of the new projects benefit diverse stakeholders, which get implemented whether the prognosis is that we have plenty of time to do things right or little time to act because a) Acting now will help fend off the worst effects of climate change, for example, or b) Existing incentives that have helped accelerate US renewables will soon disappear. The answer is the same. Although we are not fans of government incentives, many of them in the US have existed for decades and if they reach their conclusion, other governments will compensate with new policies of their own. “Winning” with renewables also means a stronger, more diverse energy sector, more sustainable and better jobs. Who really wants to mine coal for a living?

Government subsidies are simply not necessary

Why? Economics. Renewables and similar carbon emissions reduction and nature-based carbon storage solutions are already safer and more profitable than conventional energy, especially when “smart” and next generation solutions are employed such as efficiency and waste-to-value. These are even more profitable and scalable with government incentives, but we need not rely on them.

For example, US Federal and State-level Tax Credits for “doing the right thing” have been around for decades. Whether that means their time has come or that they will outlast any given political regime, we will have to wait and see, but having never relied on them in the first place, precisely for that reason — they are subject to the political winds that blow.

The playing field is already unlevel enough that, worst case, we really don’t need governments to make it more so. Strong projects stand on their own merits, where carbon credits, tax equities, and other tools usher in a more just and sustainable world … so developers and investors are advised to make (sustainable) hey while they last.

The economy tilts toward lasting value, and market manipulators eventually get their comeuppance. In other words, good business always works, no matter what the political climate.

What about inflation?

Seems there are already fears that, despite the rhetoric, the next US administration will increase the deficit, ignore prudent monetary policy, and cause a resurgence of inflation. That means interest rates will go down a bit in the near-term, if we’re lucky, but then go even higher. Policies that cut taxes but spend like a drunken sailor (whatever the priorities as seen by that administration) will not yield a healthy economy in the long-run.

We at In3 Capital earlier responded to the higher interest rates by simply eliminating our clients’ interest expense (was never a profit center, and less profitable projects became infeasible) — instead using minority equity funding for up to 100% of the project’s budget. If interest rates come back down, that will enable developers to affordably leverage debt (when profitability thresholds are met and loans still amortize) while keeping incrementally more of their own equity.

Although we are headquartered in the US, we’ve always had global reach, and prioritize developing and emerging markets in our investment strategy, a large part of social justice in that most of these countries had no part in creating the climate mess, but can be and often are part of the solution.

For example, housing is another bipartisan issue. Healthy food and food security . . . Living with decent quality of life — access to clean water, clean air … these all transcend political ideologies. Further, we need to work together without regard to political views to get things done, as we always have. We help create good jobs, meaningful work, and professional roles that withstand political polarization, delivering essential value. That never gets old.

Have you noticed that the natural world doesn’t actually need us?

The opposite is not true. We rely on ecosystem services just to sustain life, like clean air, clean water, and much more. But even if our society makes a bigger mess of the climate (short-term thinking tends to perpetuate profit centers of the past rather than seeking to innovate new, more sustainable ones), nature will prevail. Just as we witnessed during the Covid Pandemic, nature moved back into the places and spaces we humans had previously occupied. Overall energy consumption declined as people “sheltered in place,” and degraded lands were given a chance to bounce back.

Worst case, even if we neglect or ignore our overall role with repairing the environment and healing the toxic political environment in the near-term, causing greater risk down the road for subsequent generations, there has never before been such a uniting force as planetary health and sustainability, now much more prominent in decision making. Because no matter how you vote, we all live here.

This offers hope and prosperity while doing the right things. Something much more rewarding than living in fear about what the future may hold, such as whether or not we’ll survive the next climate-related natural disaster.