Pine Gate Renewables has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, initiating a court-supervised sales process for most of its assets
The company has secured financing from lenders to maintain operations for now, but plans to sell most of its assets and business operations
Policy headwinds, import tariffs, and high interest rates continue to pressure US solar developers, triggering a wave of bankruptcies
Pine Gate Renewables, a leading solar and storage projects developer, owner, and operator in the US, has filed for bankruptcy protection with a Chapter 11 filing in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas.
While its current operations will continue, thanks to financing commitments from some lenders, the management has announced a competitive sales process for ‘substantially all of its assets and business operations’.
Pine Gate operates over 2 GW of solar and storage assets, and provides services to over 7 GW of 3rd party solar and storage assets through its wholly-owned subsidiary, ACT Power Services. The developer also counts more than 30 GW projects in its development pipeline and has closed nearly $10 billion in project financing and capital investment. In December 2024, it announced the ‘largest’ proposed solar and storage project in the US with 1.2 GW capacity in Oregon (see North America Solar PV News Snippets).
Now it has announced agreements with some lenders to sell some of its solar projects – both operating and those nearing completion – and development assets.
An agreement with another secured lender will see Pine Gate selling its independent power producer (IPP) platform and substantially all of its development pipeline that includes around 10 GW DC of safe-harbored new project capacity. ACT isn’t under the purview of Chapter 11, but the company is seeking bidders for this business outside of the bankruptcy process.
Pine Gate explains the reason for this decision, “Like many others in the renewable energy sector, our business has been impacted by factors beyond our control, including evolving regulatory and capital market environments. We have also faced challenges internally that constrained our resources. Given these headwinds, we reviewed multiple financial and strategic alternatives to determine the best path forward for Pine Gate.”
Ben Catt, the CEO of Pine Gate, adds, “To ensure that our projects continue generating renewable energy, we made the strategic decision to commence this court-supervised sales process.”
Pine Gate’s decision to go up for sale comes in the wake of policy headwinds in the US, where a fossil-fuel preferring administration is phasing out Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) tax credits and tightening permitting rules for solar and wind energy (see US Treasury Tightens Rules On Clean Energy Tax Credits).
High tariffs on imported solar products and rising interest rates are making things harder for solar developers. Even for residential solar, under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), the Investment Tax Credit (Section 25D ITC) will permanently end on December 31, 2025, instead of being gradually reduced until 2034 as planned under the IRA (see OBBBA Could Cut US Residential Solar Capacity By 46% By 2030).
Pine Gate joins the list of some of the high-profile bankruptcies in the US solar industry in recent times. Europe’s Meyer Burger gave up its US solar cell and module manufacturing plans due to a lack of funds and policy uncertainty. SunPower, Sunnova and, very recently, fintech platform Solar Mosaic also went the Chapter 11 route (see US Fintech Platform Solar Mosaic Files For Bankruptcy Protection).
