Thirteen years ago, Paul Clary, Phil Croskey and Jason Schwartzberg were working in business development at the Baltimore Development Corporation when the trio — their ambitions piqued by a newspaper article reporting that only 5 percent of the local market had taken advantage of residential energy choice — had a sort of joint revelation.
“What else could we be doing?” Schwartzberg recently recalled the three thinking. “We were doing good work for the city, but there was an underlying feeling that entrepreneurs get – and it was hard to ignore.”
That underlying feeling, aided by $10,000 the three “pulled together,” led to the launching of MD Energy Advisors (MDEA), a Baltimore-based commercial, utility and financing energy solutions company that, in essence, helps businesses and government agencies grow greener.
In the ensuing dozen or so years, MDEA itself has grown dramatically, adding employees, clients and offerings.
Early on, for example, the company added a financing arm, C-PACE, which uses borrowed capital for the upfront costs associated with energy efficiency or renewable energy improvements.
Last year MDEA secured $150 million for C-SPACE initiatives in five states, and just last month the company announced it had secured some $2 million in C-PACE financing for Howard County’s Old Dobbin Business Park, a 26-acre facility of office buildings sponsored by Goodier Properties and Centennial Medical Group.
As for employees, the workforce at MDEA has grown by 360% since 2020.
The trio of longtime co-workers remains the core of the company: Schwartzberg, who holds an MBA from Loyola University Maryland, as president; Clary, who holds a bachelor’s in Business Administration from Morgan State University; and Croskey, who also earned his bachelor’s in Business Management from Morgan State, as CEO.
Together, they have used their ambition, contacts and talents to build a company that this year – for the third consecutive year – was named one of the nation’s fastest growing companies by the non-profit Initiative for a Competitive Intercity.
The MDEA workforce is diverse, as more than half identifies as minority, and that diversity is not new: MDEA is federally certified as a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise and state-certified as a Minority Business Enterprise.
Two of the three founders attended Morgan State University, and the company is conscientious about working with historically black colleges and universities. Among those colleges is Morgan State, where MDEA is helping school officials earn an Energy Performance Contract that will support campus-wide modernization initiatives.
The support his company provides HBCUs, Schwartzberg said, is critical, as the schools often do not have the in-house talent and expertise needed for renewable energy projects.
“While HBCU campuses are renowned for historic buildings and grounds, many administrations face what can be a daunting task – improving and modernizing facilities that were build more than a century ago to ensure they are ready for the next generations – Z and beyond,” he said.
Another of MDEA’s partners is The Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore. The Associated uses MDEA as a consultant for buying bulk electricity and gas for its energy consortium – a group of synagogues and day schools in the Baltimore area, and the organization’s buildings.
According to Ben Gershowitz, The Associated’s vice president of facilities, MDEA provides monthly market updates on commodity futures pricing and puts together his organization’s requests for competitive pricing for buying those commodities.
“Our relationship has been mutually beneficial,” Gershowitz said in an email response to questions. MDEA “has been very professional and organized in its approach to its business line and communications.”
Bulk purchasing of electricity and gas through MDEA, he added, “allows us to provide price certainty for the participants in our consortium, and we obtain better pricing than the default pricing provided by Constellation.”
The Associated also worked with MDEA for years to find a site for and to build a solar farm.
MDEA “stayed by our side vetting numerous sites along the way,” Gershowitz said. “They were finally able to locate a rooftop solar site through their network of contacts, and we went live this past December.”
The solar farm, he noted, provides his organization ”with an opportunity to green our corporate carbon footprint and also provides us with price certainty on the cost of our electricity for the next 20 years.
“It’s a great financial savings vehicle for our…
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