Global energy developer ENGIE, a leader in the world’s transformation to a low-carbon energy economy, and Clean Energy Collective (CEC), the nation’s leading community solar developer and solutions provider, are joining forces to accelerate regional scaling of the community solar market in the Northeast U.S. and broaden access to the benefits of affordable, local, clean power generation to a significantly wider customer base.

Through a joint development agreement, the two companies will share financial and technological resources to develop and deploy a large-scale portfolio of community solar projects across several Northeastern states that will serve residential, commercial and public entities. The move underscores the confidence in community solar’s rapid expansion as one of the world’s largest energy companies is now deeply involved with the community solar market’s leading player. This new portfolio of community solar projects will be in addition to the Sept. 7 announcement that both companies worked together to complete a Massachusetts community solar portfolio consisting of 17 solar facilities.

“Our relationship with ENGIE, coupled with our unmatched ability to deliver localized, market-specific community solar solutions on a national scale, makes the possibilities for community solar nearly limitless,” said CEC’s founder and CEO, Paul Spencer. “No two companies are better positioned to accelerate broad and equal access to affordable clean energy. We are pursuing dozens of projects in five states and this will pave the way for exciting new innovations in the rapidly-expanding community solar industry.”

The combined venture leverages the strength of ENGIE’s customer base and balance sheet with CEC’s proven expertise in creating markets, developing projects and managing construction and operations of solar assets. CEC will leverage its Community Solar Platform, proprietary technology enabling successful community solar program design, integration and execution. This joint venture paves the way to scale access faster than would be possible through either company’s individual efforts. The companies will jointly own and operate the community solar projects pursued through the joint development agreement.

A global leader in developing energy assets, ENGIE is one of the largest retail electricity providers in the United States, proudly serving over half of Fortune 100 companies, and customers in New England since 2003. ENGIE is a long-standing and well-regarded brand, recognized by customers and utilities for its transparency, financial strength and process efficiency. As the prevailing community solar market leader, CEC brings an unmatched track record of developing, subscribing and operating successful community solar projects across multiple markets, enabled by its powerful and widely-adopted proprietary software suite that fully integrates front and back-end services including customer enrollment, facility and data management, billing integration and long-term customer engagement.

“As market innovators, CEC has proven community solar is an effective tool in meeting the growing demand for clean energy. ENGIE is excited to partner with CEC as the leader in this space, delivering on community solar’s potential in the Northeast and beyond,” said Vikram Kulkarni, vice president of solar for ENGIE Resources. “We are seeing increasing demand for clean generation in New England, and we commend our customers, regulators and grid operators as we all promote our clean generation agenda,” Kulkarni added.

The hundreds of thousands of megawatt hours of clean power that will be generated by the ENGIE/CEC joint development agreement portfolio of community solar projects will deliver substantial economic and environmental benefits. Thousands of residential, commercial and municipal participants will save on their electricity expenses. Local communities will benefit from engineering and construction jobs, lease payments and tax revenues. The locally-sited facilities enhance the grid by adding power generation close to consumption, reducing power losses from long transmission lines. The additional renewable capacity also supports the low-carbon agendas of the host states.