Last line: yeah, good tip.

Basically, lenders accrue Impact Points instead of interest, and Impact Points can be used to reinvest in another solar project the same way lenders would with their returned loans. I think it’s a smart alternative to giving interest payments, which is an important incentive for lenders. I can even see Impact Points being used flexibly later down the road for some kind of reward system…credit card reward points is the first thing that comes to mind.

But with the current set up, I very much agree that both SunFunder and Solar Mosaic are probably not the best way to invest for retirement. Hopefully in the coming years that will change, because I’d love to invest in clean energy projects and make some earning from it!

What happens is you loan them money, they use it to finance projects, the projects pay back the SunFunder loan with interest, your original money is returned to you, any profits stay with SunFunder.

Now, if they aren’t “management heavy”, using the earnings for unrealistic salaries/bonuses, but are plowing the earnings back into new project loans that could be a good model. If they can use other people’s money to build a loan fund that is self-supporting then they could do a lot of good.

But if someone is looking for a way to invest in clean energy projects this does not qualify as an investment.

Solar Mosaic is designed as an investment. If their projects succeed then one would get back their investment plus earnings.

With both I’d suggest people look at them as a potential way to do some good with money they can afford to loose and not as a way to invest for retirement.

I think the unique thing with Sunny Crowd is that they are broader than solar, but only focused on renewable energy. Wind is certainly very cost-competitive in many places these days — could see this offering a good boost to wind projects.

(Solar is definitely the most supported, so probably most worth featuring in promotional materials. :D)

There are two crowdfunding platforms I know for solar projects that are already up and running: Solar Mosaic (http://joinmosaic.com) and SunFunder (http://sunfunder.com). SunFunder solely focuses on solar projects in developing countries, whereas Solar Mosaic focused on solar projects in the US on their piloting period. Currently, Solar Mosaic is currently undergoing a transitional phase so there is no crowdfunding taking place on their website, but SunFunder is crowdfunding for a solar project in Tanzania. They were both featured in a Bloomberg white paper: http://gigaom.com/cleantech/how-crowdfunding-could-revolutionize-solar/.

However, it’ll be interesting to see how crowdfunding will do for renewable energy projects other than solar. Solar seems to be a hotter topic (no pun intended) than other renewable energy sources in the news, so I would imagine it’d be tougher to publicize the less popular renewable energy sources and get funding for them.