"The hardest step on any journey is the first one. If you don’t take that step, you will always wonder what could have been.”
Family has always been an important part of RE Royalties company culture.
After becoming a new father and wanting to make a difference for his children’s future, Bernard Tan was reminded of his grandfather’s advice to take that next step.
It was a unique advisory role with a small company that helped Bernard see the potential of a new way to provide financing and make an environmental impact.
RE Royalties was created with a lofty objective: to help build renewable energy projects faster through innovative financing, while leading the way for socially-conscious investors.
Every idea starts with a problem.
Ours was simple: royalty financing for renewable energy projects did not exist.
Before co-founding RE Royalties, Bernard was working with a local clean technology company to help with their financing. The company had a promising technology that looked to harness the kinetic energy from tides and canals to generate clean electricity.
Not only did they have the technology to generate clean renewable electricity from an unlimited resource, they had an established development partner, the government was waiting to provide them with permits to install at various sites, and a long-term revenue contract to buy the electricity at a very high price. The only stumbling block was raising capital.
Bernard started looking at various options: venture capital – too expensive; private equity – too much control given up; public markets – too many hoops to jump through; debt – too restrictive; government funding – too many strings attached. While there were suitors and options, none of them seemed perfect.
It turns out there was also a simple solution.
RE Royalties was started to create an alternative and an opportunity to make a difference for future generations.
Bernard contacted Peter Leighton, who was experienced in the renewable energy sector and joined the company as co-founder.
RE Royalties officially launched in January 2016.
In March 2016 the company closed it’s first deal and acquired it’s first royalty in British Columbia, Canada.
We pioneered the royalty-financing concept for the renewables industry.
The company is the first to provide royalty financing for renewable energy projects and has went on to build a portfolio of royalties in Canada, the United States and Europe. These long-term royalties are on over 470MW of solar, wind and hydro projects that are currently in operations or will be in the near-term.
These projects play a significant role in combatting climate change, as it will displace over 321,700 tonnes of carbon per year from entering the atmosphere.
In November 2018, RE Royalties took the next step in the evolution of the company by listing on the TSX Venture Exchange. This listing not only provides a platform for liquidity for shareholders but also creates an avenue to tap into the capital markets for continued growth.
