Harry Giovani and the price of getting things built

A charging station can look like a very polite contradiction. It offers electricity for free, occupies a patch of valuable retail space and carries an advertisement large enough to make its intentions clear. Someone pays for the equipment. Someone pays for the power. In Volta Charging’s model, advertising helped make the arrangement possible. In July 2019, a $44 million financing package helped the company expand it.

Harry Giovani was on the financing side of that story. Energy Impact Partners’ credit platform provided the facility in partnership with CION Investment Corporation. The charging cable was the visible part. Behind it sat a business model, a lending relationship and the question that follows almost every useful energy idea: how does the next installation get paid for?

Giovani’s route to that question began well before he joined an energy investment firm. It ran through commercial finance, industrial transactions and the work of building lending processes. Today, as Managing Partner & CEO of Energy Impact Partners Credit, his remit stretches from finding deals to watching what happens after the money goes out. The career comes into focus by following those obligations into the businesses themselves.

An education in things that cost money

Giovani graduated from Cornell University in 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in finance. The following year, he began at Citigroup, working in its Citicorp Securities and CitiCapital divisions. Over six years, his roles covered underwriting, origination and business development. It was a broad introduction to the movement of capital, from examining a transaction to finding the next one.

At GE Commercial Finance, between 2004 and 2007, the work became distinctly industrial. He executed middle market transactions in sectors including steel, paper, chemicals, manufacturing, technology and automotive. He later became a vice president in GE’s Industrial Project Finance Group. These were businesses with machinery, materials and projects attached to their financial statements. The numbers came with physical consequences.

In 2007, he became a vice president and founding member of FirstLight Financial Corporation, a specialty finance company sponsored by Ares Management and Catterton Partners. His work included developing its underwriting process and document infrastructure, as well as leading investment due diligence. An investment policy rarely receives an ovation. It still has to work when everyone has left the meeting.

His next chapter was CION Investment Group, where he held the titles of co-founder, senior managing director and chief credit officer. The group provided alternative financing to asset-intensive companies. Giovani also served on investment committees, including that of CION Investment Corporation, whose lending focused on senior secured debt of U.S. middle market businesses. By the time EIP came calling, credit was the organizing subject of his career.

A new desk at the energy table

On April 4, 2017, Energy Impact Partners announced a credit group for U.S. small and middle market businesses, with an emphasis on energy-related investment. Giovani joined as managing partner. Greg Richards joined as managing director. Their responsibilities included sourcing and executing deals, monitoring the portfolio and overseeing operations.

The financing menu included secured term loans and unsecured debt. EIP already had equity investing experience and a network of utility partners; credit widened the ways it could support companies. For a business trying to grow, the choice of capital matters alongside the amount. A loan brings a repayment schedule and negotiated terms into the relationship.

The first credit fund investment, announced in March 2018, went to Tendril Networks. Based in Boulder, Colorado, Tendril worked in residential energy analytics. Its offerings included home energy reports, bill monitoring and demand management. Zoma Capital also participated. Giovani’s industrial finance background had arrived at a company whose work reached the household through software and utility services.

His comment about Tendril focused on management, technical talent and growth. That combination would recur in the early credit transactions. The company’s technology supplied part of the case; the people running it supplied another. Even an elegant energy product has to pass through an organization before it reaches a customer.

“look forward to supporting the company’s growth plans”

Harry Giovani on Tendril, March 2018

Pipes, platforms and a different clock

The next investment moved underground. In October 2018, EIP’s credit platform announced a $22 million facility for Aquam, which served owners and operators of water and natural gas pipe infrastructure. Its work included diagnostics and rehabilitation. This was another version of the industrial world Giovani knew: equipment already in service, infrastructure requiring attention and a company with work to finance.

The structure divided the task. A $17 million loan supported refinancing and working capital. A further $5 million delayed draw term loan was available for growth and acquisitions. That division gives a useful glimpse of lending in practice. An existing obligation, the cost of operating today and the possibility of expansion tomorrow do not all share the same timetable.

Palmetto presented a different operating problem. In February 2019, EIP announced financing facilities of up to $20 million for the clean technology software and fulfillment company. Founder Chris Kemper linked the money to expanding the platform and shortening cash flow cycles, alongside wider North American growth, staffing and sales programs.

A cash flow cycle is the interval in which a business may be doing useful work while waiting for money to catch up. It is an unromantic phrase for a very consequential stretch of time. The customer sees a product. The company has to manage the resources needed to deliver it. Financing can help cover that interval, subject to the terms agreed.

Giovani’s public remarks about Palmetto emphasized management and employee talent, and their focus on the company’s direction. Richards described a customized structure developed with senior management. Alongside the size of the facility, those details explain the work: a lender examining an operating business and arranging capital around the needs identified.

Free charging comes with a bill

Later that year came Volta. The company placed charging stations at retail locations, combining the service with advertising. At the time of the July financing announcement, its network had more than 700 stations across ten states. Retail partners included Whole Foods and Macy’s. Volta covered installation, maintenance and electricity costs within its offering to retailers.

The $44 million financing supported expansion of that charging and advertising platform. There was a familiar name beside EIP: CION Investment Corporation, connected to Giovani’s earlier career. The transaction brought two chapters of his professional life into the same financing arrangement. A lending background accumulated in one setting was now being applied to a business putting charging equipment into retail locations.

To read the transaction only as an electric vehicle story would miss some of its interest. It was also a story about where customers spend time, what advertisers pay for and which party bears the costs of a service described as free. The charger offered a simple experience to the driver. The commercial arrangement behind it had several participants.

That is a recurring feature of the businesses in Giovani’s EIP chapter. Their products touch ordinary activity: an energy bill, a pipe network, a household installation, a parked car. The financing sits further back, where operating costs and growth plans must be made to fit an agreement. Electricity may move quickly. The business paying for its delivery has a calendar.

The work after the announcement

During 2020, EIP Credit Strategies participated in transactions totaling more than $100 million involving five new U.S. businesses: Williams Industrial Services Group, Derive Systems, Tenere, Trekker Group and The Eastern Specialty Company, or TESCO. The reported activity ranged across sectors, rather than staying within a single recognizable clean technology product.

Giovani described the mission as providing creative capital solutions to smaller middle market companies. The emphasis on structuring matters. A financing arrangement has to accommodate the specific business it backs, while preserving the lender’s obligations. The announcement also described continued support for existing investments, including Palmetto and Volta. New transactions were only part of the job.

In July 2021, EVmo announced a $15 million debt financing with EIP. The business rented vehicles into the rideshare, carshare and delivery economy. Its announced plans included expanding the fleet and increasing the electric vehicle share. Giovani connected the financing to scaling its electric fleet; EIP colleague Tal Sheynfeld also spoke about access to vehicles for gig workers.

Those were goals announced with a financing, and the distinction matters. Capital supports a plan; it does not turn every projected vehicle purchase into an accomplished fact. Reading the deal that way brings the investor’s actual task into focus: assess the business, negotiate the commitment and continue paying attention as operations develop.

The later paperwork makes that continuing relationship tangible. A Dragonfly Energy filing dated January 3, 2025 includes Giovani’s signatures for Energy Impact Credit Funds I and II on a December 2024 loan amendment. The agreement involved waivers of financial tests and changes to loan terms. Lending carries on through amendments and monitoring, long after the first announcement has stopped attracting attention.

Giovani’s present responsibilities include that portfolio work, alongside sourcing, execution, operations and marketing. He also sits on the credit strategy’s investment committee. His home city is Jupiter, Florida. The professional route from Cornell through commercial finance remains visible in the businesses his team has financed, and in the structures used to do it.

Return to the charging station and the contradiction becomes easier to understand. A driver sees a cable and a display. A retailer sees a service on its property. An advertiser sees an audience. A lender has to examine the arrangement that holds those interests together. Giovani’s career has followed that less visible work: finding a way for a business to pay for the next useful thing.