Clean Energy and Renewable Fuels
Shipman's clean energy and energy efficiency lawyers assist clients with clean energy projects, including solar, fuel cell, combined heat and power, geothermal and waste to energy. Our services include permitting and securing government and market incentives and financing to implement energy and cost-saving strategies. Our lawyers are leaders in energy conservation and efficiency projects, green building, LEED and other high performance building standards and sustainability codes. We regularly advise clients on green building new construction and renovation and the interplay between energy and environmental issues on such projects. We represent clients before state regulatory authorities and advise them on local, state and federal renewable energy and energy efficiency incentive and financing programs, including innovative programs such as Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs in Connecticut and other states, including New York and California.
We are experienced at integrating clean energy and energy efficiency improvements into various contract documents, including design build, leases and energy savings performance contracts. As part of that work we advise clients on preconstruction design issues, building and solar facility maintenance, warranties, site lease and licensing issues, pricing structure, reliability, and energy and tax credits.
We have assisted public and private clients in negotiating and implementing solar PV power purchase agreements and site leases ranging in size from 50 kW to 5 MW. The projects have included ground and roof mounted systems and have received funding or incentives from state and federal incentive programs. We have also represented facility owners in power purchase agreements and energy service agreements for fuel cells and gas fired combined heat and power units ranging from 400 kW to over 15 MW in size. We have worked extensively with municipalities and their schools on all aspects of energy efficiency, energy procurement and renewable energy projects.
Our energy lawyers counsel and represent clients in all areas of clean energy projects including:
- Renewable energy and on-site distributed generation
- Energy efficiency services
- Government and market incentives
- Project finance, permitting and construction
- Energy storage
- Solar PV and thermal
- Fuel cell
- Cogeneration, combined heat and power and steam loops
- Geothermal
- Hydroelectric
- Power purchase agreements
- Energy savings performance contracting
- Utility-scale solar farms and solar lease
- Waste to energy facilities
We also represent clients, including importers, traders and blenders, with respect to compliance with the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the federal Clean Air Act (CAA). Our RFS-related experience includes advising clients in connection with complying with the RFS, renewable identification number (RIN) trading and agency enforcement-related matters.
