Equity to Elevate Diverse Innovators

Over thirty utilities and other companies have pooled their dollars to drive innovation in our industry via Energy Impact Partners. So EIP is having an enormous effect on shaping the industry's clean energy transition. Which makes its creation of the Elevate Future Fund especially interesting given this fund's mission to shape the transition with equity and diversity top of mind.

PUF's Steve Mitnick: Energy Impact Partners made a big announcement on the twenty-eighth of July.

EIP's Anthony Oni:Yes, we are very excited about EIP's newest fund called the Elevate Future Fund. It's focused on creating a more inclusive, equitable, and diverse clean energy future.

I want to take a step back and talk about EIP first. Energy Impact Partners is one of the first and largest special-purpose investment funds focused on the clean energy transition and on the low-carbon economy. It is made up of thirty-plus utility and industrial partners that together represent almost forty-five million customers and four hundred and fifty billion dollars in market capitalization.

EIP is a platform that invests all the way from early-stage to growth-stage companies. It is underpinned by a strong research and innovation team that works closely with our partner experts to drive value to our portfolio companies and provide innovation and insights on the utility of the future to our partners. 

When we think about the Elevate Future Fund, part of the reason why this fund exists is to make sure we are more broadly and inclusively considering who participates in this new economy that is being created. One of the things I take lessons from is some of the [economy's] transitions in the past.

When we look at the current landscape of how capital has been deployed, we know it's not equitable. We need only to look at the digital transition. We saw two parts of the country, the east and west coasts, that largely won out. Under-represented demographics didn't participate fully in that shift. 

So, as we go through this clean energy transition, we want to be more intentional about making sure access to capital flows to Black, Brown, Latinx, Indigenous groups, women, LBGTQ, veterans, and individuals with disabilities. We want to make sure that under-represented founders and entrepreneurs �" what I call the underestimated �" have the chance to take part in this economy.

Investing in people who have a unique lens in which they solve problems in those local communities is what is going to ensure a more efficient transition toward this low-carbon environment. We need to make sure that we are bringing everyone along. That is really the focus.

The Elevate Future Fund is targeting to raise a hundred and twenty million dollars. We are already more than halfway through our fund-raising goal through support from our existing utility partner network.

Our fund is taking a holistic approach. It's one that is unique to what I've seen in the venture capital space.

We are making sure we are invested in the communities that our industry partners serve. This includes all parts of America and directing capital to grow super-regional tier 1 and tier 2 suppliers to support this transition. We do this to have more impact for our partners but also to leverage their considerable resources to make more impact. 

We are also funding other minority funders and incubators. We are in the process of reviewing other funders. This is so that we can align our support through capital and invest in like-minded funds that will uphold the collective mission, through their own capital deployments and get more under-represented people to join our industry.

PUF: How will you find companies to invest in?

Anthony Oni: Our approach is multifaceted. One way, in particular, is leveraging our utility industry partners. Utilities in the U.S. have a public interest to make sure that everyone is served, that everyone has access to clean, safe, affordable, and reliable energy.

Those utilities have to work with different constituent groups. Whether it's your elected officials, mayors, city council, governors, community groups, education institutions, nonprofits, you name it. They have an embedded, ready-made pathway for engagement in local communities.

Those pathways are used for growth, workforce training, recruitment, and economic development. We are going to work closely with utilities to superimpose venture capital on these pathways, to show that venture capitalism can work in all under-served communities, while removing barriers and demystifying how access to capital works.

We will use that as a way to identify companies, and let founders and entrepreneurs know that great ideas can come from a multitude of backgrounds and demos. They can come from Black, Brown, and Latinx communities, not just the typical, mostly white, mostly male Silicon Valley demographic we often see.

When you look at historically Black colleges and universities, they graduate large numbers that are focused on engineering and other STEM-related fields. We want to make sure that clean energy, sustainability, this low carbon future, is a part of [what they go on to do].

Another source is going to be what we do in fund-to-fund investments, empowering other under-represented fund managers to look for and help build companies run by under-represented talent. Historically, some of the traditional venture capital firms only fund people who look like them.

What's going to grow next is middle America, those small cities, those small communities, and towns. So, it's important that we utilize that utility network that's already there, that are already engaged pathways, making sure that we are deploying capital through those networks to those groups that are looking to make change in our economy to a more sustainable future.

PUF: Tell us about how you got interested in trying to spur innovation and more evenly across our country.

Anthony Oni: It started at a young age, in New Jersey. My father [Dr. Ben Oni] worked at Bell Labs when I was four years old. Back in the day, Bell Labs was instrumental in a lot of innovations that we use today. He also taught at North Carolina A&T and is now Dean at Tuskegee University's College of Engineering, Architecture and Physical Sciences.

So, I know how important historically Black colleges and universities are to the fabric of our country. These are really treasured institutions that I had a very great pleasure growing up around and are key our collective success.

I spent twenty years working at Southern Company across its footprint and in multiple roles. One of the roles that was really impactful for me was economic development, where I spent a lot of time. You know, one of the things that you realize is again, how connected utilities are to the areas that they serve. Utilities are incentivized to make sure their communities grow. If the communities don't grow, the utilities don't grow.

I had a great opportunity to work on some really great education projects, one of which is called Ed Farm, which is a partnership between Alabama Power and Apple. We're fortunate that [Apple CEO] Tim Cook actually flew down and helped me launch the Ed Farm initiative, which worked to infuse technology and make investments in teachers and students in the classroom. The effort also aimed to create an ecosystem where we could invite other entrepreneurs, other smart people to help solve educational challenges.

As a Black founder [of Cloverly, a sustainability-as-a-service platform helping brands create carbon neutral experiences with customers], I understand the struggles to create a startup. The grind, it's not for the faint of heart. I think there's a lot I can do to empathize and support other founders.

Only two percent of the people who work in [Silicon Valley] are Black, making it hard to find people to identify with. Because in none of the rooms that I walked into while working and pitching my startup did I find the people who looked like me.

This year alone, according to data from Crunchbase, despite the overall venture capital funding increase we've seen, Black female startup founders have raised only 0.34 percent of the record hundred and forty-seven billion dollars invested in the first half of 2021. It tells you that there's still a long way to go to make sure that more groups have access to capital.

PUF: You're already going out and finding some of these great firms and trying to help them grow.

Anthony Oni: The investments we have made so far represent what we are trying to do. One in particular that I'm extremely excited about is the ChargerHelp! team, which has created a company focused on the clean energy transition. In short, it has built the first and only on-demand repair platform for electric vehicle charging stations [as detailed at chargerhelp.com]. The company is led by a terrific female founder and CEO and is providing jobs in the EV ecosystem to people who could be easily overlooked in the new job market of the energy transition.

They solve a real problem for the industry while providing net new green jobs throughout the United States. Today they're technicians who represent ex-oil, ex-factory, and ex-telecommunications. Thirty-five percent are veterans and sixty percent are people from under-represented backgrounds.

This story is unique in that they not only created this platform [for on-demand repair of charging stations] that dispatches local workers within hours-of-service ticket generation to have stations back on online within seventy-two hours or less. This is a company that has found favor with our utilities partners as they continue to grapple with ongoing maintenance of the EV infrastructure that our economy will need to count on for the future. 

I'm excited about what the future holds when we are more intentional about capital access to more diverse founders looking to solve some of the most challenging problems facing our planet.