I’ve been getting a LOT of inbound over the last year since President Joe Biden took office as investors and renewable energy developers the world over increasingly see the United States as a “great place to invest”. Sergio Blanco was my direct boss at Conergy, the last real “job” I held, at a time when I was trying to learn what it takes to develop and acquire pipeline in the then-booming Latin America solar market. We went through a LOT of projects, market consideration and strategy meetings, and on-the-ground hunting. So, you could say we both understand what it looks like to develop new markets through trial-by-fire.

Sergio is now the Director of Project Finance at Partner Engineering and Science (Partner) and is focused on helping Partner’s stakeholders evaluate and due-diligence the Renewables sector. He leads the Due Diligence process, financial modeling, project accounting, and feasibility reports for lenders of solar PV and Storage projects, amongst others. He has managed the acquisition and financing of more than 1GW on solar projects throughout the USA and Latin America, and has also managed organizations and M&A Transactions for S&P 500 Companies and relevant Renewable Energy Developers throughout Latin America and the US.

In today’s discussion, we focus on the 3 key areas that international companies must focus on when investing in new markets:

Knowledge gathering / best practices - How well do I understand the market?
Foreign direct investment - What kind of investment will it take, and what are the expected returns?
Operational Readiness - What must I understand about place, people, projects to stand up a functional business in the region?

It’s a treasure trove of insight packed into a tiny package, so I hope you enjoy this Tactical Tuesday, Solar Warrior! Thanks for taking the time to stop by. I’d love to hear from you. How did this episode land? Good timing? Leave you with more questions than answers? I’m here for you…DM me or better yet leave your Questions as a comment on my LI Post for today’s episode (might have to scroll to find it)!

And I get into a little more of the back-story on the blog post for the episode, so hope you’ll check that out as well!

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