Buchalter’s Energy and Natural Resources attorneys are highly experienced in providing practical advice to clients on transactional, compliance and regulatory matters.
Transactional
Buchalter’s energy group has extensive, in-depth experience with all aspects of conventional and renewable energy transactions, including power purchase agreements, complex financing agreements, ancillary arrangements such as interconnection, transmission service, and purchase or sale of specialized market products such as energy storage, capacity, congestion revenue rights, and transmission rights—across the entire landscape of players in the energy industry.
- Negotiating all types of power purchase agreements, including large natural-gas powered plants, wholesale and retail solar developments, hydropower, geothermal, and wind.
- Advising on PPA terms including price and deliverability provisions, to assure consistency with current market and regulatory environment
- Representing developers, buyers, sellers, and financial parties such as bank, guarantors, and equity finance
- Assisting clients in administering, interpreting, and resolving disputes in existing power purchase agreements
- Assisting clients with bid processes, including developing requests for proposals and requests for information, reviewing and evaluating submissions, and assisting clients with the development and structure of solar, wind, and other renewable projects
- Negotiating and administrating of gas purchases and related fuel and transportation matters
- Complex energy dispute resolution processes
Compliance
Buchalter works with clients to assure they have up-to-date, comprehensive information on regulatory requirements for all types of activities in the energy industry and provides representation in both federal and state courts and administrative agencies.
- Appearing before the California Public Utilities Commission on matters such as
- Rate design cases
- Rate Design Window applications
- Utility Procurement proceedings
- Departing load cost allocation
- Rulemaking
- Negotiating settlements
- Advising clients on applicability and compliance with the California Global Warming Act (AB 32) greenhouse gas accounting and reporting and Cap-and-Trade activities and use of the resulting funds
- Representing clients in all aspects of renewable energy — identifying the applicable renewable portfolio standard and how to achieve it
- Licensing matters for power plants before the California Energy Commission
- Serving as trial counsel before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on matters involving compliance with market rules, open access to transmission, power plant , the California Energy Commission,
- Assisting owners of generating facilities, energy marketers and transmission owners in understanding and complying with the California Independent System Operator tariff and market rules,
- Advising and appearing before the California Air Resources Board
- Advising clients on the impact of the Dodd-Frank Act and implementing regulations on energy transactions
- Helping clients understand and implement compliance programs for NERC and WECC reliability regulations
Regulatory
Buchalter’s Energy and Natural Resources team keeps a close eye on regulatory developments impacting the energy and natural resources sector in order to provide insight into changes and emerging trends needed to keep abreast in this rapidly changing industry. Drawing on the breadth of the firm’s resources, Buchalter can provide clients with essential intelligence and representation in a wide range of regulatory topics:
- Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
- California Independent System Operator
- California Public Utilities Commission
- California Energy Commission
- Western Electricity Coordinating Council
- California Air Resources Board
- Securities and financial matters, including Dodd-Frank
- Congress and state legislatures
Representative Clients
- Large municipal utilities
- Large industrial energy users
- End-use customers
- Public agencies
- Community choice aggregators
- Public utilities
- Private utilities
- Natural gas suppliers
- Independent generators
- Procurement entities
- Repower project proponents
- Co-generators
- Combined Heat & Power plants
- Petroleum companies
- Energy project developers, conventional and renewable
Representative Topics
- Energy policy
- Infrastructure development
- Solicitations
- GHG emissions
- Demand Response
- Natural gas infrastructure
- Natural gas transmission
- Unmanned submarines
- Geotechnical investigations
- Refinery and power plant operations
- Transmission tariffs
- Interconnection
- GHG Mitigation
- Emission performance standards
- Tiered rates methodology
- Residential exchange issues
- Hydropower licensing and operations
- Utility general rate cases
- Independent system operator formation
- Autonomous vehicles
- Smart grid technology
- Mergers and acquisitions/energy
- Alternative vehicle fuel rate market design
- Risk management
- Climate change
- Natural gas storage
- Mandatory Reporting of GHG
- Distributed energy resources
- Tax credits (solar, wind)
- Renewable energy portfolio standards
- GHG Performance standards
- Water/energy nexus
- Energy efficiency
- Departing load
- ISO Governance
- Public-private partnerships
