Capital raising and compliance—a clean energy CFO’s focus

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The global oil crisis is boosting renewable energy power producers like Pivot Energy, but not in the ways you’d think, CFO Bret Labadie told CFO Brew.

“I do think, although there’s not a direct impact there, there’s clearly…a more thematic transition that’s happening on a global level around energy security and domestic production of energy…and that’s not as much, what is displacing what in the energy system?” Labadie said. “It’s just wanting more security to buffer your economy from geopolitical risks that you have no control over.”

But this transition, sandwiched between “some pretty challenging regulatory requirements” and the rising demand for electricity, means Pivot’s had to make some adjustments to meet the moment, Labadie said. At the same time, Pivot is growing to accommodate a shift in its business model.

“One of the things I’m passionate about is helping solve big, complex problems, and the transition of our energy system, as a macro thing, toward something that’s more sustainable on a go-forward basis, is the definition of a really complex problem that needs solving,” Labadie said.

Demand growth. According to a BloombergNEF report, 2025 was a “momentous” year for clean energy in the US. Overall US energy transition investment jumped 3.5% to $378 billion, and a record $115 billion in capital was deployed for grid support and reinforcement.

“Sustainable energy technologies not only held their ground in 2025 but notched key, new achievements,” the BloombergNEF report said.

Labadie began his career in fossil fuels and traditional energy, but in 2015, intentionally shifted into renewable energy. Working with privately held Pivot for six years, the last four as CFO, he has seen the growth of renewables up close. Despite the proliferation of energy assets in the industry, Labadie sees vastly more room for maturity.

“That’s what really gets me excited; we are just continuing to innovate and move along that maturity curve,” he added.

Compliant thinking. Unfortunately, last summer’s federal budget reconciliation act made changes to the Inflation Reduction Act’s green energy tax credits and “created new challenges to bringing solar and wind assets online,” Labadie said, referencing, for instance, the restrictions on some foreign entities constructing and owning clean energy facilities.

The changes have made compliance a deeper focal point for Pivot.

“There’s much more focus on supply chains, and what is coming together to deliver these assets, and it’s driven by these new requirements, which then become requirements of financiers, then it just gets sucked into the system. So it’s truly a much larger lift on compliance to deliver these assets,” Labadie said.

Flipping the script. Private equity firm Energy Capital Partners acquired Pivot Energy in 2021 for an undisclosed amount. Since then, Pivot has been able to shift business models to operate its assets in-house, Labadie said. Before ECP, Pivot was a “develop and flip” solar developer, he said, selling projects to other groups prior to construction and using those profits for future development.

The greater access to capital via ECP “enables [us] to actually not have to sell the assets, but instead finance and construct, and then operate those assets [ourselves],” he explained.

“Becoming an independent power producer (IPP)…fundamentally changes everything,” Labadie said. Pivot went from 70 employees to over 200, “and that’s building out entire functions of the business that didn’t exist in a ‘dev flip’ business model, such as construction, pre-construction, asset management, operations and maintenance, the broader build-out of the financing team to support all the financing.”

Separate from being an IPP, Pivot operates distribution grids that sit near the demand, as opposed to “large solar projects that then you need transmission to bring it into the load.” This makes the assets more valuable, he said, and addresses concerns around the intermittency of energy sources like solar and wind.

“These are very capital-intensive projects,” Labadie said. “We will spend, you know, call it $600 million this year in project capital, and so we need to raise financing for much of that, and that’s really what my job is.”