Q&A with Jessica Pitts on Building Flywheel Renewables and Why Impact Developers Matter

Jessica, tell us a bit about yourself. What experiences or influences led you into the clean energy and sustainable development space?

My path into clean energy and sustainable development grew out of my love of nature, and my experiences spending time hiking and enjoying the natural environment growing up. As a young teen, I would bring a plant identification book on my hikes, and catalogue the trees, flowers, and grasses that I saw along the way. I knew that I wanted to incorporate sustainability into my career, and considered several pathways while in college. For example, one pathway I strongly considered was landscape architecture. Ultimately, I got my bachelor’s in psychology, which turns out to be surprisingly useful when you are working with communities, landlords, and city governments to change how they think about energy. I then earned a Master’s in Real Estate, which combines my respect for the natural world with actionable ways to make a difference.

In my early career, I worked for an international bank and real estate company, for an energy services company administering American Reinvestment and Recovery Act funding for both energy efficiency and renewable energy projects, and at a policy NGO. Combining my experience in these three positions, I saw the built environment from three different perspectives. I could see how policy, economics, and programs for the built environment either lock in inefficiency for decades or becomes a platform for something better. It is at this intersection that I now invest my time: clean energy is truly at the nexus of sustainability and the built environment.

What is Flywheel Renewables, and what sparked the idea to create it? What gap in the market or community were you determined to address?

Flywheel is an impact developer. We were founded with the goal of partnering with communities to strengthen their foundations, and to help them become more resilient, equitable, and sustainable places to live. We are a vertically integrated company, engaged in the full lifecycle of clean energy projects: development, construction, and asset management. Our work focuses on renewable energy, including solar and storage, with a focus on community-scale projects across Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia.

What really defines us, though, is who we serve: ninety-five percent of our projects deliver clean energy to low- and moderate-income residents or nonprofit organizations. When I was working in policy, I kept seeing the same pattern: green building was gaining momentum, but the communities that stood to benefit most were largely being left behind. The financing structures were not designed for them, deal sizes were too small to attract major developers, and navigating programs required expertise that is often reserved for a larger scale. Flywheel was built to close that gap. We harness the untapped potential of green infrastructure in underserved communities, and we design projects that genuinely reinvest in the people and places we serve.

Tell us about the deal you recently closed with CFE. What meaningful impact do you expect this investment to have?

The investment from City First Enterprises is providing construction and permanent financing for a portfolio of solar projects that are close to my heart. Several are part of the District of Columbia Solar for All program, which means they will be delivering clean energy savings directly to low-income residents in the District. Others are serving small nonprofit faith-based communities, organizations doing extraordinary work in their neighborhoods who deserve to benefit from the energy transition just as much as anyone else.

And for some of these projects, we are not just putting solar on the roof. We are replacing actively leaking roofs first. That is the part that really gets me. We are walking into buildings that have been waiting years for basic repairs, and we are leaving them with a weathertight roof and clean energy. That is real, tangible impact, the kind that changes a building’s future and the people inside it. CFE understood the mission immediately, and that alignment made all the difference. This financing allows us to move these projects from commitment to operation, and ultimately to the communities waiting on the other side of them.

For women and emerging founders building mission-driven companies, what guidance or mindset has been most valuable in your own journey?

The thing I come back to most is: trust the through-line. My career was wide-ranging as I tested different perspectives: real estate finance, energy efficiency implementation, municipal policy, and then my own company. But every step built something I needed. The finance background helped me structure deals. The policy work helped me understand systems. The hands-on project implementation experience kept me grounded in what is actually hard. If I hadn’t seen all of these perspectives, I do not think I would have been equipped to build what Flywheel has become.

For women in particular, I would also say: do not wait until you feel fully ready. The bar we hold ourselves to and the number of boxes we feel we need to check before raising our hand is often higher than it needs to be. The mission and the relationships you build matter. You deserve to be in the room, and your willingness to stay and keep going matters more than having everything figured out. Look for partners and funders who share your values, because alignment makes hard things possible. City First Enterprises is a perfect example of that.