What does it take to build a clean energy company when federal policy feels like a moving target? Steve Chan, COO and co-founder of Enterprise Energy, has a front-row seat to that chaos — and a surprisingly clear-eyed plan for navigating it.
In this episode, Steve walks Jeff \"Fuzzy\" Wenzel through the full lifecycle of community solar and battery storage development: how they identify and lease land from farmers, navigate local permitting with utilities and county authorities, and manage 20 active projects across different stages of development — all with a 7-person team.
Steve shares the origin story behind Enterprise Energy — built by three co-founders who cut their teeth at New Energy Equity before spinning out to run their own shop in the Minnesota and Illinois markets they know cold. He breaks down the mechanics of the developer \"flip\" model versus building and holding, why the Climatize crowdfunding platform became a key tool for smoothing out lumpy development cash flow, and what the One Big Beautiful Bill actually did (and didn't do) to their business model.
Then he gets candid: federal policy chaos is the thing that keeps him up at night. But he also explains why Enterprise Energy is positioned in a rare \"sweet spot\" — the 1–5MW community-scale DG market where the Investment Tax Credit is still intact through 2029 — and why Illinois' newly passed Clean and Reliable Grid Act is creating a real opening for battery storage developers right now.
Enterprise Energy is actively raising funds for their Batteries for Chicagoland portfolio on Climatize, offering 10% annual interest over a 3-year term. The campaign has a $440,900 goal and a $550,750 maximum raise.
👉 Learn more and invest: https://web.climatize.earth/project/00041
🌐 enterpriseenergy.com
🎙️ Full episode and show notes: https://invst.guru/
","author_name":"Pre-IPO Hype"}