Industry experts predict senior lenders will warm to C-PACE

Chris Lawton, Managing Director/Head of Originations, Nuveen Green Capital 

This is an exciting time of dramatic growth for C-PACE financing, with the industry surpassing $10B in cumulative originations in 2025. We see this continuing as awareness and understanding of C-PACE grows with each new sponsor that utilizes it and each new lender that closes alongside it. While we continue to lend in the middle-market area, we expect growth in larger deals with more established sponsors – even institutional. This is for both recapitalizations of recently completed projects and ground-up construction.

C-PACE deals require senior lender approval. This may previously have been viewed as a roadblock, but awareness has increased. In Q2 2025 alone, Nuveen Green Capital closed with seven new senior lenders. 

Glenn Silva, COO, Lone Star PACE 

Dislocation in the marketplace will continue, so I anticipate 2026 to be a strong year for C-PACE. Although traditional bank lenders will begin to re-enter the market, C-PACE has become mainstream in nature and will continue to be included in the capital stack. Deal sizes will grow, and more developers will leverage C-PACE as a recapitalization tool for post-construction.

In addition, the CMBS world is warming up to C-PACE, and we expect this to continue. Also, data centers are often considered the next potential demand driver for C-PACE in the capital stack, because of their outsized utility consumption.

Rafi Golberstein, CEO/Founder, PACE Loan Group

I expect another banner year for C-PACE in 2026. We are seeing the highest production we have ever seen. The biggest change will be the size of the deals and the volume. We started with small to mid-size loans from $1M to $10M and are now seeing a much larger volume. I expect to see at least 12 deals over $100M and five at a quarter of a billion dollars.

Education is key. Many do not understand how flexible C-PACE lending is; it is the chameleon of capital stack. The challenge will be getting C-PACE in front of new clients for different use cases.