At The Clean Fight, we don’t shy away from tackling the thorniest obstacles slowing deployment.

Too many innovative energy storage projects are getting stuck in development because they lack access to the patient, affordable capital needed to scale. We created the Energy Storage Capital Challenge to tackle this problem head-on.


We began by identifying the key financing challenges slowing the progress of innovative energy storage projects in New York. Then, through a statewide search, we selected six development-stage projects that faced financing gaps emblematic of these larger industry challenges.

The projects incorporate novel use cases, technologies, and business models with the potential to chart a new frontier for storage deployment in New York. From mobile storage (Power Edison and NineDot Energy) to stationary storage systems that open up new sites for development (Orenda Power and Convergent Energy and Power), to novel storage for transit (Sprocket Power and Beacon Power).

Over the course of six months, we workshopped the projects’ financing strategies in real time, bringing together the project developers and 14 capital partners from across the stack, including philanthropies, green banks, infrastructure, and venture investors. We also brought in utilities, government agencies, and industry organizations that play key roles in the development process—such as NY-BEST, the State’s leading energy storage experts—to tap into their knowledge, provide technical assistance, and help each project advance more effectively. Finally, we committed $200,000 in grant capital to help test novel financing solutions uncovered by projects and partners.

Our findings are a testament to the power of deep, facilitated collaboration as an accelerant for market change.

Six months. Intensive conversations with capital and industry leaders. Actionable solutions.
First-of-many deployments.