Christopher Smith
Greenbacker Renewable Energy Company LLC and Greenbacker Capital Management, an independent power producer and renewable energy asset manager, announced the appointments of Christopher Smith, CFA as chief financial officer, Daniel De Boer as head of infrastructure, and Carl Weatherley-White as head of capital markets.
“Chris, Dan, and Carl have joined the Greenbacker leadership team during a period of not only expansion for the company but also one of transformation, as Greenbacker enters a new growth phase,” said Charles Wheeler, chief executive officer of GREC. “With their experience at some of the world’s leading investment and renewables firms, this high-caliber trio will help our team lay the foundation for future growth, bolstering Greenbacker’s abilities to identify opportunities to put investor capital to work across the energy transition asset classes.”
Smith brings more than 20 years of accounting and finance experience within the energy sector to his role as Greenbacker CFO. Over his career, Smith served as partner and CFO at private equity firm SER Capital Partners. Under his tenure, the firm successfully closed on over $500 million in capital commitments, directing investments into critical areas of the energy transition, including battery storage and energy efficiency. As the company’s interim CFO and treasurer, Smith led Sunnova Energy Inc. through its initial public offering in 2019. Also as managing director and treasurer at Hannon Armstrong Sustainable Infrastructure, he spearheaded the firm’s financial strategy and closed numerous bank and capital market transactions. As CFO, Smith succeeds Spencer Mash, who co-founded Greenbacker in 2011. Mash will remain with Greenbacker as an executive vice president.
As head of infrastructure, De Boer oversees the infrastructure investment team at Greenbacker, managing the company’s sustainable infrastructure project investments and optimizing GREC’s current project fleet. Prior to Greenbacker, De Boer served as the head of renewables at Allianz Capital Partners of America, where he oversaw the investment lifecycle – from origination to ongoing asset management – and played a pivotal role in shaping the strategic direction of business development in the Americas. Previously in his career, De Boer established Onyx Renewable Partners within Blackstone Energy Partners and launched D. E. Shaw Renewable Investments while part of the D. E. Shaw Group’s private equity team. In the newly created head of infrastructure position, De Boer takes over an integral function formerly performed by Mehul Mehta, ex-chief investment officer.
As the head of capital markets, Weatherley-White manages the financing of GREC’s diverse project portfolio. He will oversee tax equity and project financing for GREC’s pre-operational asset fleet and will also pursue opportunities to optimize GREC’s existing capital structure within the rapidly evolving infrastructure capital markets. Weatherley-White brings a wealth of experience in infrastructure financing, particularly in the renewable energy sector. Prior to Greenbacker, he served as head of renewable investments at Advantage Capital. In this capacity, he led the creation of the firm’s renewable energy tax credit syndication platform and played a pivotal role in originating and structuring over $1.5 billion in tax credit investments. Previously, he held the positions of CEO and CFO at VivoPower International, a global energy infrastructure firm. There, he played a key role in the company’s successful IPO on NASDAQ and, subsequently, took the helm in actively steering the organization’s growth strategy. His prior experiences include managing director and group head of global project finance at Barclays Capital and Lehman Brothers and director of energy structured finance at Credit Suisse.
Greenbacker Renewable Energy Company LLC is a publicly reporting, non-traded limited liability sustainable infrastructure company that both acquires and manages income-producing renewable energy and other energy-related businesses, including solar and wind farms, and provides asset management services to other renewable energy investment vehicles. It seeks to invest in projects that sell clean power under long-term contract to counterparties such as utilities, municipalities and corporations.
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