Former Debtwire editor in chief starts news service on renewable energy

The former editor in chief of Debtwire has started a subscription-based news and data company focusing on the renewable energy industry.

New Project Media is based in Princeton, New Jersey and operated by Ken Meehan, who is also the CEO.

It has reporters based in the Southeast, Northeast, West and Midwest. It writes for professionals in the industry building renewable energy projects, lenders and investors.

“I started NPM after 14 years at Debtwire because I wanted to do something that contributes to solutions the world needs for decarbonization,” said Meehan. “The power and the transportation industries together make up roughly two-thirds of total annual CO2 emissions, so focusing an intelligence service to directly help the transition in those areas was very appealing.”

Northeast reporter Elana Knopp has been covering the birth of the offshore wind industry in the U.S. since most of the activity is focused on the eastern seaboard.

Southeast reporter Andrew Burnes covers more onshore wind projects, especially in the Texas and Oklahoma, while Michaela Althouse, its western reporter, tends to cover more solar, geothermal and battery storage projects in California and the Southwest.

Midwest reporter Colt Shaw, who came aboard this week, will help expand reporting coverage of projects in the Midwest as the renewable energy transition in the region picks up pace, especially in former coal states.

The company also has an analyst team headed up by Rina Levy, who previously worked at Bloomberg covering ESG. Her team helps keep track of all of the projects in its tracker database, and New Project Media also maintains a request for proposal database that project developers use to follow up on new business opportunities.

Meehan is the majority shareholder, but capital was also raised from other investors in its initial seed round that closed late last year.

New Project Media used sources within the renewables industry to shape the coverage and website as its “beta testers,” said Meehan.

“We tried to get a good mix of folks from different areas of the renewables industry to make sure our feedback channel was wide enough,” said Meehan.

“So we have policy folks based down in DC who lobby for Investment Tax Credits for the solar industry, developers of wind, solar and lithium-ion battery storage projects, investors who are active in the tax equity market to make investments into the projects, and lenders that finance construction loans to get them built. They all had early access and in exchange they agreed to be brutally honest with us about things they like and don’t like with the service.”