Where do visionary entrepreneurs in the field of renewable energy go when they have a great idea but too few funds to develop it as a business? The answer is: Sonoma – more specifically Adam Capital in Sonoma, the cutting edge company established here by Adam Boucher in 2009.

Boucher, an entrepreneur who grew up in San Francisco and Marin and graduated from UC San Diego, spent the greater parts of 2007 and 2008 developing a financial strategy to address a critical need for capital that he saw in the race to develop green, renewable energy.

Despite government incentives for renewable energy, thousands of small projects were stalled due to lack of financing.

“Community-scale developers are working to put solar on homes, schools, churches and businesses,” Boucher said. “The problem is, these projects are too small for big banks, and they don’t fit the loan profile for small banks. There are government rebates, but projects don’t qualify for them until they’re built, which means there’s an urgent need for upfront capital to fill that gap.”

Adam Capital solves this problem by offering loans to community-scale solar developers using clean energy rebates as collateral. The company provides short-term loans between $500,000 and $5 million for small- to medium-sized clean energy developers. This gives them the financing they need to get projects built, which makes them eligible for renewable energy tax incentives and cash rebates. The rebates are then used to pay back the loan.

This then was the opportunity he saw, and in December 2009, virtually at the same time he and his wife, Tara, a Sonoma native, and their two daughters, moved to Sonoma from Scottsdale, Ariz., Adam Capital was born and made its first loan.

In 2011, Adam Capital will fund more than $26 million in renewable energy projects all over the country. In fact, the local company with headquarters on First Street West has grown so much that Boucher’s two younger brothers, Daniel and Michael, have moved to Sonoma and joined the firm.

“We grew up in a family business, Determined Productions, started by my grandmother Connie Boucher,” Boucher said, which, he added, makes his local venture with the addition of his brothers very familiar territory.

Determined Productions was an intellectual property licensing business with major clients that included Charles Schulz and his Peanuts characters. Boucher was introduced to the family business at an early age by his grandmother, accompanying her on trips all over the world. Their clients also included nonprofit environmental advocacy organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund and the Rain Forest Action Network.

“It was during one trip to Africa that I had one of those life-changing moments when it came to me that there were big challenges in life, but also big rewards for those who could figure out ways to address them,” he said.

Making private funding available so that renewable energy was available to more people in more places was one of those challenges, and one in which Boucher saw an opportunity. To his knowledge, no other company in the U.S. is doing what Adam Capital has done.

Recent successes include putting solar on the roofs of low-income housing units in Southern California, and a large urban homeless shelter in Los Angeles. The company also financed a solar parking lot for Scottsdale Christian Academy High School in Arizona – similar to the new solar parking lot going in at Sonoma Valley High School. In addition to Solar PV, Adam Capital finances commercial solar hot water projects, as well as small wind and biofuels.

Boucher said, “Clean energy projects represent a new asset class, and it requires a dedicated team to serve this market. That level of expertise is typically reserved for banks operating in the $10 million to $100 million range. Our focus is to provide that expertise and capacity at the community scale, to solve important challenges for renewable energy developers that would otherwise go unfunded in today’s financially constrained environment.”

Recently, Boucher saw a related opportunity in the energy field with the availability of more than $160 million in government incentives for the development of commercial solar hot water systems. As a result, he will soon launch Promise Energy, a new company that will offer owners of commercial properties a solar hot water system with no money down and an opportunity to save 30 percent on their current hot water production costs.

Are there are other challenges and opportunities out there? In the field of renewable energy Boucher feels they have just begun. He is looking forward, even as he enjoys addressing those challenges from the porch of his family business office a few doors from the Plaza and just a few blocks from his Sonoma residence.