Modern Energy International, an asset management firm that invests in sustainable energy, has raised $2.97 million in a venture capital fund, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The startup is a Certified B Corporation.

Founded in 2016, Modern Energy invests in and through businesses that bring distributed energy innovations to market. From energy efficiency in the United States to solar projects in emerging markets, Modern supports leaders in the transition to a distributed energy economy.

The company’s chief executive officer, Benjamin Abram, is a graduate of Duke University and was the founder and president of Wylan Energy, a sustainable enterprise that works to design energy efficient choices for consumers.

He is the son of Adam Abram, the CEO of Chapel Hill-based James River Group Holdings Ltd.

Overview: Modern Energy International

The startup says it “seeks a world with abundant , accessible, sustainable energy for everyone.”

  • Mission

“Modern Energy is an asset management firms that invests in businesses that bring distributed energy innovations to market and the portfolios of assets those businesses produce. From energy efficiency in the United States to solar projects in emerging markets, Modern supports leaders in the transition to a distributed energy economy.

“New hardware and software innovations are rapidly reshaping the competitive landscape of energy markets. Cost reductions in energy efficiency, generation, management, and storage technologies are expanding the scale and diversity of the applications where these technologies are competitive. New software applications are dramatically reducing the transaction costs required to purchase, aggregate, dispatch, and monetize millions of small energy installations as diverse as industrial coolers and solar home systems. All of these changes make for a dynamic time in energy markets, presenting opportunities for Modern Energy to identify emerging energy investment opportunities and to bring market-moving price and technology trends to scale.”

  • Investment philosophy

“Our investment activities are driven by a dynamic list of market outlooks:

  • Distributed Energy Growth – We believe the proportion of energy produced worldwide by Distributed Energy will increase dramatically in the next several decades.
  • Energy Market Disruption – We believe distributed energy technologies will both disrupt traditional energy markets as well as alter the economics of energy markets in large and small-scale ways.
  • Capital Agility – We believe intelligent investors must tailor their investment solutions to the stage or maturity of the developer with whom they are working. That will trend towards enterprise/corporate investments when the developer is young, and can transition to asset investment as the portfolio and developer mature.
  • Generalization – We believe the technologies, strategies, systems and learnings discovered in one local market can be applied to numerous other disparate local markets.
  • Localization – We believe local market conditions, management teams, and business contexts are determinant forces in investment opportunities and separate strong opportunities from weak.
  • Falling Transaction Costs – We believe new technologies are enabling developers to focus on smaller and more distributed energy assets by reducing transaction costs throughout the development cycle.
  • Democratization – We believe the adoption of distributed energy is creating material opportunities to democratize energy access.
  • Transitional Markets – We believe the richest opportunities are found in transitional markets where the most economic solution for market participants has recently changed. First movers, who identify the right bellwether events, can create outsized returns in these markets.
  • Risk Pricing – We believe risk in transitional markets is often mispriced. A business able to price risks appropriately is poised to profit disproportionately.
  • Slow-moving Incumbents – We believe high regulatory hurdles, large revenue expectations on sunk costs, and a lack of agility will cause incumbents to struggle to pursue new energy opportunities.”

Certified B

“Modern Energy became a Certified B Corporation in 2017. B Corps are a new type of company that uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems. Modern Energy was certified by the non-profit B Lab to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. We’ve evaluated how our practices impact our employees, our community, the environment, and our customers.”

Source: Modern Energy

Companies relying on a Reg D exemption do not have to register their offering of securities with the SEC, but they must file what’s known as a Form D electronically with the SEC after they first sell their securities.

Note: This story includes reporting from the North Carolina Business News Wire, a service of the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Media and Journalism