Today I’m proud to share that Evergrow has been named a Top Innovator in the second Yes SF Urban Sustainability Challenge, an honor that reflects our commitment to building a cleaner and more resilient future—starting right here in San Francisco.
Yes SF launched in 2023 with an open call to innovators across the city to submit their ideas for sustainability projects that could help revitalize downtown San Francisco. The initial Urban Sustainability Challenge celebrated 14 inspiring Top Innovators whose various inventions—including a new solar power cell, a more sustainable showerhead, and robots for demolition-site wood reclamation—brought San Francisco’s reputation for creativity and technological innovation to life.
When Yes SF announced a second urban sustainability challenge late last year, the team at Evergrow was inspired to compete.
Our vision for San Francisco
Given San Francisco’s long history of social, civic, and technological innovation, we believe our city has a special role to play in the climate transition. In San Francisco, we are the first adopters: the experimenters and pioneers that people in communities around the world look to for new ideas.
For the Yes SF Urban Sustainability Challenge, we pitched Evergrow’s main idea: We imagine a San Francisco where every commercial or community building—whether it’s an office building, warehouse, school, or church—becomes a site of clean energy production and storage. In our vision of San Francisco, building owners transform vacant rooftops into sites of solar power generation, and convert empty storage spaces to on-site battery storage. Clean energy assets distributed throughout the city not only give tenants access to clean, affordable energy—they also put San Francisco on track to meet its net-zero goals under the city’s ambitious Climate Action Plan 2021.
To make this vision a reality, we developed financial technology that lowers and eliminates hurdles to clean energy project finance. Our software makes it easier and faster to fund building upgrades like rooftop solar and on-site battery storage. Evergrow’s recognition as a Top Innovator will help us bring this technology to the developers and property owners who can benefit directly from it today—and thereby accelerate the city’s transition to clean energy.
Aligning with San Francisco’s net-zero goals
Partnership with Yes SF will help Evergrow combine smarter project financing with community engagement that scales our efforts in ways that create tangible benefits for all San Franciscans—starting with lower energy bills and new green jobs.
We’ll also help the city achieve its broader goals. San Francisco’s 2021 Climate Action Plan lays out an ambitious but achievable path to becoming a net-zero emissions city by 2040. It includes aggressive targets for decarbonizing buildings, transitioning to clean electricity, and achieving transportation equity.
Evergrow’s work aligns with these goals. Our platform helps de-risk and accelerate investments in clean energy and sustainable infrastructure—two critical levers for reaching net zero. We make it easier for developers and property owners to launch clean energy projects that might otherwise stall for lack of funds, or due to unnecessary financial complexity.
What’s next
As we look ahead, Evergrow is committed to working with the City of San Francisco, commercial property owners, and other innovators, to bring scalable, inclusive solutions to life.
We’ll continue to develop technology to make sustainable infrastructure more accessible and financially viable. We’ll help ensure that San Francisco meets its climate goals. And we’ll set a local example here in San Francisco that will inspire policymakers in cities across the country to take note—and take action.
To everyone who has supported us on this journey: thank you.
To our fellow innovators in the Yes SF community: congratulations on your innovation. We’re honored to stand alongside you.
And to all our friends and neighbors across San Francisco: we’re excited to be here, building a better future together.
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