Plural Energy 對中型再生能源專案進行代幣化以擴大投資池

這家成立兩年的代幣化公司使中型再生能源專案能夠從鏈上投資者籌集資金，其雙重目標是大幅增加可投資再生能源資產的人數，同時開發新型金融產品能源領域的產品。

The U.S. renewable energy industry is in an odd position. Large-scale projects are funded with relative ease thanks to long-established relationships with financial giants. Meanwhile, small-scale installations are becoming cheaper to implement by the day.

美國再生能源產業的處境很奇怪。由於與金融巨頭建立了長期的關係，大型專案的融資相對容易。同時，小規模安裝的實施成本日益降低。

But the consolidation of the energy sector is making it increasingly difficult for mid-sized projects to get the financing they need. These ventures, which are typically worth less than $100 million, are too pricey for regular people to pay for, yet too modest for financial heavyweights to take an interest in them.

但能源產業的整合使得中型專案越來越難以獲得所需的融資。這些企業的價值通常不到 1 億美元，對於普通人來說太貴了，無法支付，但對於金融巨頭來說卻太溫和，無法對其產生興趣。

That’s where Plural Energy steps in. The two-year-old tokenization firm enables mid-sized renewable energy projects to raise funds from investors on-chain, with the double-aim of dramatically expanding the number of people who can invest in renewable energy assets while also developing new kinds of financial products for the energy sector.

這就是 Plural Energy 介入的地方。為能源產業開發新型金融產品。

“Right now, the process of raising capital for solar is just unacceptable. We’re never going to hit our climate goals,” Adam Silver, co-founder and CEO of Plural Energy, told CoinDesk in an interview. “[We want] to make an easy button for capital raising for good climate assets.”

「目前，為太陽能籌集資金的過程是不可接受的。我們永遠無法實現我們的氣候目標，」Plural Energy 聯合創始人兼執行長 Adam Silver 在接受 CoinDesk 採訪時表示。 “[我們希望]為良好的氣候資產籌集資金製作一個簡單的按鈕。”

“By taking advantage of tokenization, we can essentially unlock all of the magic that happens in DeFi ecosystems, and bring it to an industry that's desperately in need of financial innovation,” Silver added.

Silver 補充道：“通過利用代幣化，我們基本上可以釋放 DeFi 生態系統中發生的所有魔力，並將其帶入一個迫切需要金融創新的行業。”

Investors can access four types of products through Plural Energy. The first is small-scale asset-backed instruments, like a project bundling 1,000 rooftop solar installations into a single security, which is then tokenized. The second category is development-stage renewables, and the third is operating renewables (for example pre-existing solar plants that seek to raise additional funds to expand).

投資者可以透過 Plural Energy 獲得四種類型的產品。第一個是小型資產支援工具，例如將 1,000 個屋頂太陽能裝置捆綁成單一證券的項目，然後將其標記化。第二類是開發階段的再生能源，第三類是營運再生能源（例如尋求籌集額外資金進行擴建的現有太陽能發電廠）。

The fourth category, Silver said, is the “weird stuff,” like a battery that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to trade, or the bitcoin (BTC) mine being built by Sangha Renewables on a West Texas solar plant operated by an energy company. “Things that are a little bit out of the ordinary for traditional infrastructure investors, but are really cool to everyone else,” Silver said.

西爾弗說，第四類是“奇怪的東西”，例如使用人工智慧（AI）進行交易的電池，或者由Sangha Renewables 在一家能源公司運營的西德克薩斯州太陽能發電廠建造的比特幣（BTC）礦場。 「對於傳統基礎設施投資者來說，這有點不尋常，但對其其他人來說很酷，」西爾弗說。

So far, the majority of these projects have involved solar power in one form or another, but Plural has also looked into wind-based initiatives and even a hydropower deal.

到目前為止，這些項目大多涉及某種形式的太陽能，但 Plural 也研究了基於風能的舉措，甚至水力發電交易。

Yet these projects didn’t make it past Plural’s due diligence. To date, a total of five deals, representing $40 million, have been given the green light to raise funds through the platform. Only 5% of the deals considered by Plural make it to the finish line, but that hasn’t discouraged demand for the platform, which currently has around $150 million, across a dozen assets, to bring on board in the coming months.

然而這些項目並沒有通過 Plural 的盡職調查。迄今為止，共有五筆交易，金額達 4,000 萬美元，已獲準透過該平台籌集資金。 Plural 考慮的交易中只有 5% 能夠完成，但這並沒有抑制對該平台的需求，該平台目前擁有約 1.5 億美元的資產，涵蓋十多項資產，將在未來幾個月內上線。

“When a renewable energy company comes to us, we put it through our broker-dealer due diligence process, and then we also do asset due diligence,” Silver said. “We make sure that it's like an asset that really any one of us would feel comfortable investing in personally.”

「當一家再生能源公司找到我們時，我們會對其進行經紀交易商盡職調查流程，然後我們也會進行資產盡職調查，」西爾弗說。 “我們確保它就像我們中任何人都願意親自投資的資產。”

While broker-dealers must ensure that investors aren’t getting scammed, they aren’t necessarily responsible for making sure that something is a good investment. Nevertheless, the Plural team insists on only presenting deals that it’s confident in, Silver said.

雖然經紀交易商必須確保投資者不會被騙，但他們不一定負責確保某件事是一項好的投資。儘管如此，Plural 團隊堅持只提供其有信心的交易，Silver 表示。

The first ever project greenlit by Plural took six months to complete the process from start to finish, from agreeing to tokenize with Plural to a live tokenized security offering. That timeline has now been brought down to six weeks.

Plural 批准的第一個項目從開始到結束，從同意 Plural 代幣化到實時代幣化證券發行，花了六個月的時間完成。該時間表現已縮短至六週。

Plural’s business model and technologies “open up capital markets to the most sensible pool of investors, streamline the fundraising process, and provide transparency to all parties,” Spencer Marr, president of Sangha Renewables, told CoinDesk.

Sangha Renewables 總裁 Spencer Marr 告訴 CoinDesk，Plural 的商業模式和技術「向最明智的投資者開放資本市場，簡化融資流程，並向各方提供透明度」。

Once they’ve been given the nod, issuers on Plural get to choose what types of securities they want to offer — like common equity, convertible notes with interest, or unsecured convertible notes. Each of these security instruments receives a unique token in the back-end. Investors then get to choose what kind of security they want, and receive the appropriate tokens for it.

一旦獲得批准，Plural 上的發行人就可以選擇他們想要發行的證券類型，例如普通股、帶有利息的可轉換票據或無擔保可轉換票據。這些安全工具中的每一個都會在後端接收一個唯一的令牌。然後，投資者可以選擇他們想要的證券類型，並獲得適當的代幣。

But each deal comes with its own unique requirements. For example, one project gave retail investors the opportunity to invest as little as $500 in a portfolio of solar projects. In the case of Sangha’s bitcoin mine, however, the deal is only open for accredited investors, with a minimum investment of $50,000.

但每筆交易都有其獨特的要求。例如，一個專案為散戶投資者提供了投資低至 500 美元的太陽能專案組合的機會。然而，就 Sangha 的比特幣礦而言，該交易僅對合格投資者開放，最低投資額為 50,000 美元。

Plural is a registered transfer agent, meaning that it maintains the ownership documents, known as cap tables, of the projects financed through its platform. Under Plural’s system, each tokenized security gets its own on-chain cap table, the data from which is then cross-referenced with a Know-Your-Customer (KYC) database to generate an SEC-compliant cap table.

Plural 是一家註冊轉讓代理，這意味著它維護透過其平台融資的專案的所有權文件，即股權結構表。在 Plural 的系統下，每個代幣化證券都有自己的鏈上上限表，然後將其中的數據與「了解你的客戶」(KYC) 資料庫交叉引用，以產生符合 SEC 要求的上限表。

“The only way you can change who owns what [in the project] is by changing

「改變誰擁有[專案中的]東西的唯一方法是改變