The office tower at 1001 17th St. in downtown Denver. (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)

A Chicago-based renewable energy company is powering a new office in downtown Denver.

Invenergy is leasing 29,000 square feet — the entire 19th floor — at 1001 17th St., the company confirmed to BusinessDen.

“We are excited to expand our office and team in Denver to meet the increased national demand for cleaner, more reliable and affordable energy,” the company said in a statement.

According to permit applications, the development of the area will cost $1.9 million, or $66 per foot.

Invenergy was founded in 2001 and opened an office in Denver in 2005—its first outside of Chicago. The company is currently located at 1401 17th Street.

The company said it is the “largest private owner, operator and developer of clean energy solutions” with offices in Japan, Spain, Toronto and Mexico and has completed over 200 projects delivering a total of 32 gigawatts of electricity.

For comparison: It takes almost two million solar modules or almost 300 wind turbines to generate a single gigawatt.

Invenergy developed the Spindle Hill natural gas power plant, located 30 miles north of Denver, in 2007. The company also operates six other wind power projects across the state, from south of Pueblo to north of Sterling in the Eastern Plains.

The new lease reduces the vacancy rate at 1001 17th St., which BusinessDen reported last year had one of the highest vacancy rates in Downtown Denver at 40.5 percent.

The 20-story, 659,000-square-foot office tower was built in the 1970s and renovated in 2007. Cushman & Wakefield is marketing the building and says on its website that 164,000 square feet are available, meaning the building is about 25 percent vacant. The entire 12th, 14th and 15th floors, as well as portions of the lower floors, are available. Asking rents range from $26 to $27 per foot on a triple-net lease.