15. LIFE ON LAND

Energy and Climate Solutions

Written by Amanda

A new energy economy is taking shape before our eyes. As the realities of climate change become harder to ignore, the need to deploy low-carbon energy solutions grows stronger. Over the last decade, renewables have added around 1 percent annually to their share of the nation’s electric supply. They’re on track to provide around one-third to one-half of electricity by 2030. Some have targeted an even higher goal of 80 percent clean power by 2030.

The clean energy transition is reshaping the entire U.S. economy. Our manufacturing, water, agriculture, and technology industries are undergoing a metamorphosis that will result in them drastically reducing their carbon footprint and prioritizing resource use efficiency.

The opportunities to redraw the nation’s energy and economic map are there, ready to be seized. The question is: Which companies will capitalize on the shift to net zero and emerge as new winners in the new energy economy?

Wilson Sonsini is the firm of choice for companies, investors, and lenders seeking to structure, negotiate, and close groundbreaking transactions in the new energy economy and emerging climate solutions sector. As the newest, nimblest, and most focused projects law practice in the United States, we dedicate ourselves to a single goal: advancing what’s next in the energy industry and decarbonization technologies across economic sectors.

Unlike other major law firms, our mission and resources are focused on advancing solutions to build the clean energy economy and address climate change, not fighting against the reality that all major economic sectors need to evolve, decarbonize, and be more efficient. We recognize the imperative—and the opportunities—presented by climate change and want to assist the innovators that will make a decarbonized future cheaper, more transparent, more equitable, and easier to use.

A Tailored Client Approach

For each assignment, and depending on client needs, we assemble the right personnel and expertise, offering our clients the advantages of working with a collaborative, coordinated, and mission-driven team that maintains a pragmatic focus on the needs of project participants.

  • When we work with early-stage companies, our approach is guided by the firm’s 60-plus-year history of helping innovative, disruptive companies grow.
  • For project development and project finance clients, we take a commercial-minded approach focused on closing transactions, opening the capital flow, and getting projects built on time and on budget.
  • For project investors, banks, and other lenders, in addition to delivering substantial value through our asset and infrastructure finance expertise and nexus to energy, carbon, and resource markets, our attorneys are known for their novel and influential approaches to deals, and for completing first-of-their-kind transactions.

Beyond a fundamental dedication to the energy and climate solutions sector unrivaled by any other law firm, one quality that sets our attorneys apart is our longstanding relationships with strategic investors, private equity firms (including venture capital), and major financial institutions across the U.S. and abroad, which allow us to serve as a conduit to—and advisor regarding—a wide variety of funding sources. We understand both project sponsors and capital providers, and excel at finding the necessary balance between the two to close critical financings.

Regardless of the type of client we’re representing, our aim is to create alignment between both concurring and conflicting interests, and to help clear the way so deals get done. This point is best illustrated by the growing number of purchase power agreements and other novel off-take agreements, successful joint ventures, unprecedented projects built, and other closed project transactions associated with the firm.

Wilson Sonsini is synonymous with game-changing technologies and market-changing companies. We don’t just work with the world’s most innovative companies—we count ourselves among them. Fast Company rated us as North America’s sixth-most innovative company for 2022. It was the first time a law firm made this distinguished list.

Our Integrated, Multidisciplinary Team

Wilson Sonsini fields an integrated team of attorneys with industry-relevant, practical experience that includes:

  • Negotiating novel offtake agreements with Fortune 100 corporate purchasers and community choice aggregators
  • Creating complex joint ventures
  • Financing large-scale energy and climate solutions projects around the world
  • Launching and growing innovative energy companies
  • Structuring and negotiating first-of-their-kind energy and climate solutions transactions
  • Helping clients seize opportunities in complex energy markets and regulatory schemes
  • Pioneering and extending financing structures so that billions of dollars can flow into projects and companies

Our multidisciplinary team represents new competitive business models, technologies, and financing mechanisms revolutionizing how energy is generated, transmitted, sold, and consumed. Similarly, we represent pioneers in technologies, markets, and services decarbonizing non-energy sectors, from electric vehicles and related charging services, to pre- and post-combustion carbon capture in industrial processes, to carbon reduction projects in agriculture. We also help develop market and project financing schemes of more efficient resource use, energy efficiency monetization, water resource conservation, and other natural resource savings.

Our Services: Build Companies, Build Projects, and Arrange Financing

When we describe our team as “multidisciplinary,” it means that in addition to each attorney’s expertise, we bring together the skills and resources clients need to pursue and achieve desired results. More importantly, it means we can assist clients across all project phases, from development and financing to expansion or renewal options. Individually, our attorneys are leaders in their fields. And collectively, we are capable of even greater things.

The comprehensive scope of our energy and climate solutions services can best be summarized in three points:

  • Our corporate team builds the companies driving change in how energy is produced and sold and how industries are decarbonizing.
  • Our project development, transactions, and regulatory team builds projects such as energy storage facilities, transmission systems, wind farms, carbon sequestration projects, and water and waste treatment facilities.
  • Our project finance team, consisting of attorneys with tax/tax equity, private equity/debt, structured finance, and/or bankruptcy expertise, arranges financings for clean energy and climate solutions projects.

Our Clients

Wilson Sonsini’s sophisticated energy and climate solutions practice is anchored by experienced and creative attorneys who represent more than 400 clients across several industries, including:

  • Innovative, emerging renewable energy companies
  • Established entities developing and financing large-scale infrastructure projects
  • Large public and private companies involved in significant energy initiatives

Wilson Sonsini also represents leading strategic investors, private equity firms (including venture capital), energy project investors, and other lenders actively involved in commercializing energy and climate solutions innovations and project finance.

Within the expansive energy industry, Wilson Sonsini represents renewable and clean energy producers, advanced fuels and chemicals companies, traditional electric power generators, and other innovators operating in developing areas. For example, our energy and climate solutions industry clients operate in the following sectors:

  • Agtech
  • Biofuels, biomass energy, and biochemicals
  • Carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration
  • Carbon credits, markets, and services
  • Data centers and cryptomining
  • Distributed energy resources
  • Electric vehicles, charging infrastructure, and services
  • Energy efficiency
  • Energy storage and battery technologies
  • Forestry and reforestation
  • Fuel cells, combined heat and power, and waste heat recovery
  • Geothermal power
  • Green building and industrial technology
  
  • Hydroelectric, wave, and tidal energy
  • Hydrogen
  • Microgrids, remote electrification, and resiliency
  • Nuclear
  • Pollution reduction and resource management
  • Smart grid and advanced scheduling and trading
  • Solar power
  • Transmission
  • Transportation, electric vehicles, and related infrastructure
  • Waste-to-energy
  • Water efficiency

Source: wsgr.com

About the author

Amanda

Hi there, I am Amanda and I work as an editor at impactinvesting.ai;  if you are interested in my services, please reach me at amanda.impactinvesting.ai