This is where American Diversified Enterprises (ADE) can help. It brings expertise, knowledge, and a deep understanding of application preparation, feasibility studies, RFPs, bidding, and project financing documentation. This enables the company to assist businesses in developing and deploying game-changing technologies and expanding market penetration of renewable energy, renewable chemicals, biobased products, alternative fuels, and advanced technologies. ADE, along with its subsidiaries Due Diligence & Analysis, 3rd Party Studies, and Project Financing Assistance, works toward creating waves of innovation in the renewable energy space.
For over two decades, ADE’s subject matter experts have helped companies complete funding requirements and submit successful requests for grants, debt, loan guarantees, bond, and equity investment financing, securing the funding for them to advance through each technology readiness level (TRL). ADE has assisted more than 250 companies—from startups to Fortune 500s—in securing more than $5 billion in funding to advance the commercialization and deployment of first-of-their-kind technologies, materials, and production methods.
ADE stays in touch with federal agencies to understand their changing perspectives, especially with the climate crisis, and supports clients in completing applications and bidding procedures.
“Our expertise and skills fill the gaps in client solicitations and help them avoid unexpected mistakes and address agency biases,” says CJ Evans, managing director, ADE.
Everything under One Roof
One of ADE’s subsidiaries, Project Financing Assistance (PFA), has a structured project financing (SPF) program that provides interest-only, four-year term loans. This is a unique, low-interest source of financing for first-of-akind projects and technologies. It includes financing for final development and pre-construction—like front-end engineering and design, permitting, deposits for equipment purchases, and securing offtakes—often the most challenging money to find. It also covers construction, startup, and a minimum of 12 months and one day of full commercial operations. This reduces project risk and helps projects become bankable to qualify for refinancing and follow-on deployments from private sector lenders.
Another ADE affiliate—Due Diligence & Analysis—takes care of financial verification by evaluating and calculating the risk of lending to a particular borrower. It conducts technical, financial, project planning, and construction due diligence, including investigations, certifications, audits, and reviews to confirm all the material facts and details of a matter under consideration are accurate, complete, and clearly presented. Through project development analysis, it reviews, audits, and verifies each TRL’s data, conclusions, and successful completion during the testing, validation, scaleup, and readiness for commercialization of new technologies, processes, and materials.
Our expertise and skills fill the gaps in client solicitations and help them avoid unexpected mistakes and address biases in documentation
Handholding Clients throughout the Journey
ADE begins by working with clients after they have validated, tested, and bench-scaled their technology and are ready to proceed to the next level. ADE helps companies address the disparate challenges they face at various stages of their project or technology development. It helps them make their technology commercially ready and obtain funding for prototypes and pilot plants. ADE also offers expertise for clients who have already deployed their technologies and want to scale up. Once a client approaches ADE for assistance, its project manager brings together ADE’s in-house experts, legal and banking partners, and third-party consultants to meet the client’s needs and find the best solutions for advancement.
ADE’s project management process follows the Shipley method for document management and project schedule, setting up a secure online folder for each client and creating a project plan with tasks assigned. The ADE team facilitates project kick-off calls with clients to familiarize them with each solicitation’s requirements, set up introductory meetings with agency staff, where such introductory meetings can take place, such as for federal loan guarantees, and introduce them to at least three banks, in the cases where private financing is a part of a federal loan guarantee.
ADE schedules weekly status calls, facilitates the development of applications through multiple drafts with ongoing client input, oversees document control, and manages copy editing, proofreading, and the production of final documents for submission. Its objective is to ensure each client is able to communicate its concept, vision, and technology in the best, most compelling way to rise above other applicants to secure a grant.
The Height of Excellence
A successful, registered lobbyist for more than four decades, Evans co-founded an advocacy organization in 2019—the Alternative Fuels & Chemicals Coalition (AFCC)—with his long-term business partner, Mark Riedy, who is a partner and finance and energy attorney at the Kilpatrick, Townsend & Stockton law firm. The objective in establishing AFCC was to lobby for federal programs and annual funding that support projects and initiatives advancing the bioeconomy. Today, AFCC is the second largest bioeconomy advocacy group in Washington, DC, with more than 150 member companies that employ more than 600,000 people and generate in excess of $350 billion per year in revenues.
The Title 17 program funds projects that cannot obtain privatesector financing due to their high risk and potential failures in scaling and building projects with new technologies. It provided funding for the first utility-scale wind and solar projects in the U.S. It also enabled the rollout of many significant innovations like the first Tesla and Nissan Leaf models and the development of EcoBoost motors used in all Ford vehicles today.
ADE’s team members come from successful careers managing equity firms, marketing and media companies, and complex construction projects, securing billions of dollars in financing through stock and bond offerings, mergers and acquisitions, state and federal grants, and tax incentives. They have also handled public-private partnerships, managed state and federal agency programs, successfully lobbied policymakers at all government levels, and drafted legislation subsequently embodied in state and federal statutes.
ADE continues to act as a bridge between technology innovators and forward-minded energy officials to tackle climate change and save the planet. It all adds up to the company being there to take the lead for businesses when they need it most.
