Bear Creek Wind Farm

Among our earliest work around sustainable energy is the financing of wind farms in Pennsylvania. Reinvestment Fund supported seven of the first eight utility-scale wind farms in the state.

Among them is the Bear Creek Wind farm in Luzerne County, which generates 71,173 megawatt hours of electricity per year—enough to power 8,900 households annually.

The 15-acre wind farm was developed jointly by Community Energy and the investment banking firm Babcock and Brown. Reinvestment Fund provided both a $5.75 million syndicated loan and a $2 million wind energy production incentive grant to the project. Our financing leveraged more than $33 million in additional equity for the project, bringing together a range of other investors and lenders, many of whom were first-time institutional investors in wind energy production. We also provided underwriting, due diligence and legal work to launch this venture by an independent Pennsylvania wind developer.

The 12 turbines at Bear Creek were the largest in America at the time, each generating two megawatts of power. They were manufactured by the Spanish Gamesa Energia, which consequently selected Pennsylvania as its North American base for operations, bringing new jobs to the state.