Complex and Clean Energy Project Experience
The world is moving toward a new energy reality dominated by carbon constraints. Legislation before Congress would require a 70-85 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, achieving these cuts through a cap and trade system that will pressure manufacturers to reduce fossil-fuel energy sources in favor of renewables like wind, solar, biomass, and probably nuclear, as well as incentivizing new technologies like carbon capture and sequestration.
Even if this legislation does not pass soon, EPA regulations, numerous state requirements, litigation, and growing economic incentives are providing powerful sticks and carrots to move U.S. manufacturers toward lower carbon energy alternatives. As with prior government regulation, many businesses are seeking to minimize the compliance costs and take advantage of the opportunities that will come with such a far-reaching transition across the U.S. economy. Pepper is experienced in developing multi-disciplinary approaches to identifying and advocating ways to achieve environmental goals that avoid unintended consequences or are more cost-effective.
For several decades, our lawyers have been involved in large, complex energy and other complex projects in many states and overseas. Many of these projects include alternative energy sources, and our work has included all legal matters associated with funding and completing these projects. Such financing includes evaluating financing based on the receipt of greenhouse gas (GHG) allowance bonuses or offsets that can be sold in the future and the use of alternative energy credits, as well as new government loans, grants and guarantees.
We assist clients in all aspects of project development, including regulatory compliance; acquisition of real estate; project financing, including structuring relationships between multiple project participants; negotiation and review of contractual relationships, including energy sales agreements, power purchase agreements, operating agreements and construction contracts; and preparation of project financing documentation. We also advise on state and federal environmental permitting of power projects and other energy projects. Many of these projects (and virtually all involving alternative energy) required the use of tax credits.
Pepper’s Complex and Clean Energy Project Team is uniquely qualified to serve as “project counsel” overseeing the entire scope of a project and all professional consultants, including co-counsel in local matters. Pepper’s nationally known construction lawyers are experienced in project structuring, contracting, project management and dispute resolution, and draw support from practitioners in environmental regulation and permitting, real property, intellectual property, and project finance. At the same time, we recognize when unique local or political issues require “boutique” firms with special expertise or relationships. In all matters relating to the project, we are guided by a single principle – what is best for our client’s interests.
Most recently, Pepper was selected to represent a public utility company in New York to build a power plant that would compress and liquefy the CO2 emissions and sequester them underground, which would be the first demonstration project of CCS technology in the United States. The development of this power plant carries with it all the legal issues involved in developing any new coal-fired power plant, with an additional layer of issues associated with the CCS demonstration project.
Other representative recent or ongoing engagements include:
- representing a major public utility in the development of two new combined-cycle electrical generation plants, one in Pennsylvania and one in Texas
- representing the developer of a waste-to-energy project that will connect with the PJM transmission grid in Pennsylvania
- representing the developer of two wood-to-energy generation plants in California
- representing an investment fund focused on alternative energy projects, including synthetic fuels plants and landfill methane gas projects
- representing the developer of a pressurized fluidized bed combined-cycle coal waste facility for electrical generation.
