Early in her career, Amanda Li worked on many deals in solar and storage as part of a billion-dollar sustainable infrastructure fund. And she discovered a problem that often hinders deployment: the underwriting process is cumbersome and slow.

“All of it was in spreadsheets, word documents, emails. When you look at a solar deal, there's a lot of documentation, a lot of counterparties to deal with, and that information needs to be processed somehow. It felt like we were spending a lot of time just trying to process the information,” explained Li.

This problem has only grown over time as more distributed assets need financing, and policies like the Inflation Reduction Act support smaller clean energy projects at the community level. These small- to mid-sized projects often require as much diligence and paperwork as much larger deals.

So in 2018, Amanda co-founded Banyan Infrastructure, a software platform that simplifies transactions for a wide range of sustainable infrastructure projects – replacing spreadsheets, email, and PDFs with digitized loans and workflows.

The company has raised more than $42 million and works with green banks, Wall Street firms, and local lenders to make deals simpler. 

“If at every single layer there aren't standards, there aren't connected processes, it's going to move really slowly,” said Li.

In this episode, produced in partnership with Banyan Infrastructure, we explore the shifting world of sustainable finance. 

Stephen Lacey talks with Banyan COO Amanda Li about solving financial bottlenecks, how the IRA is bringing in new players to the market, and what it will take to unlock trillions of new dollars per year for the energy transition.

Banyan Infrastructure is simplifying and accelerating the financing of sustainable infrastructure. Read the company’s white paper on unlocking the full potential of sustainable finance, or request a demo to learn how the software works.