Energy and Climate Solutions
-
Wide-Ranging Experience
Wilson Sonsini has developed one of the leading clean energy project development and finance practices in the U.S., with experience ranging from negotiating novel offtake agreements with corporate purchasers and community choice aggregators, to navigating complex regulatory environments to create competitive opportunities, to financing large-scale energy and infrastructure projects globally.
-
Climate-Focused Mission
Recognizing the imperative of addressing climate change, our team uses our broad skill set and deal-making creativity to assist clients developing technologies, business models, and projects to decarbonize and increase efficiencies in the energy, transportation, materials, industrial, water, agricultural, and technology sectors.
-
Client-Centered Approach
We strive to form long-term relationships of collaboration and trust with emerging clean energy companies and sponsors; established entities developing and financing large-scale infrastructure projects; banks and other institutional investors putting billions of dollars of capital to work in energy and climate solutions; large companies involved in significant energy, climate, and sustainability initiatives; private equity firms; project investors; and lenders.
A new energy economy and infrastructure is emerging before our eyes. The opportunities to redraw the nation’s energy and economic map are everywhere, ready to be seized. Bold, innovative companies will capitalize on the shifting landscape and emerge as winners in the new energy economy.
Wilson Sonsini is the firm of choice for those seeking to structure, negotiate, and close groundbreaking transactions in the new energy economy and emerging climate solutions sector. As one of the newest, nimblest, and most focused projects law practice in the U.S., we dedicate ourselves to a single goal: advancing what’s next in the energy, decarbonization, and climate space.
Other law firms may be content with fighting to preserve legacy market power despite the fact that all major economic sectors need to evolve, decarbonize, and be more efficient. But at Wilson Sonsini, our mission, resources, and energy clients are focused on advancing solutions to develop, build, and finance the clean energy economy.
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 and navigate complex markets and regulatory regimes.
- For project development and project finance clients, we take a commercial-minded approach focused on clearing commercial and regulatory hurdles, 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 get 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.
Our Integrated, Multidisciplinary Team
Wilson Sonsini fields an integrated team of attorneys with industry-relevant, practical experience that includes:
- Structuring and negotiating first-of-their-kind energy and climate solutions transactions
- Negotiating novel offtake agreements with hyperscalers/data centers, Fortune 100 corporate purchasers, utilities, and community choice aggregators
- Creating complex joint ventures combining technologies, expertise, and capital
- Financing large-scale energy and climate solutions projects around the world
- Helping clients create and seize opportunities in complex energy markets and federal and state 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, Open Markets, 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
The firm 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:
|
|
A new energy economy and infrastructure is emerging before our eyes. The opportunities to redraw the nation’s energy and economic map are everywhere, ready to be seized. Bold, innovative companies will capitalize on the shifting landscape and emerge as winners in the new energy economy.
Wilson Sonsini is the firm of choice for those seeking to structure, negotiate, and close groundbreaking transactions in the new energy economy and emerging climate solutions sector. As one of the newest, nimblest, and most focused projects law practice in the U.S., we dedicate ourselves to a single goal: advancing what’s next in the energy, decarbonization, and climate space.
Other law firms may be content with fighting to preserve legacy market power despite the fact that all major economic sectors need to evolve, decarbonize, and be more efficient. But at Wilson Sonsini, our mission, resources, and energy clients are focused on advancing solutions to develop, build, and finance the clean energy economy.
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 and navigate complex markets and regulatory regimes.
- For project development and project finance clients, we take a commercial-minded approach focused on clearing commercial and regulatory hurdles, 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 get 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.
Our Integrated, Multidisciplinary Team
Wilson Sonsini fields an integrated team of attorneys with industry-relevant, practical experience that includes:
- Structuring and negotiating first-of-their-kind energy and climate solutions transactions
- Negotiating novel offtake agreements with hyperscalers/data centers, Fortune 100 corporate purchasers, utilities, and community choice aggregators
- Creating complex joint ventures combining technologies, expertise, and capital
- Financing large-scale energy and climate solutions projects around the world
- Helping clients create and seize opportunities in complex energy markets and federal and state 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, Open Markets, 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
The firm 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:
|
|
The Development Capital Facility draws on best practices from the renewables and natural resource sectors, establishing a revolving development credit facility designed to accelerate project development across Zanskar’s growing portfolio. The non-recourse facility covers key pre-construction activities, bridging projects to traditional bank project financing, and is structured to upsize to $100 million as Zanskar’s portfolio scales.
The financing transaction strengthens Zanskar’s ability to commercialize its pipeline of naturally occurring geothermal systems and sets a scalable financing precedent for greenfield geothermal as a recognized asset class across the United States.
The Wilson Sonsini team that advised Zanskar on the transaction included Scott Zimmermann, Jason Slagle, Nicole Gambino, Bob O’Connor, Jordana Palgon, and Jenae Sharp.
The Development Capital Facility draws on best practices from the renewables and natural resource sectors, establishing a revolving development credit facility designed to accelerate project development across Zanskar’s growing portfolio. The non-recourse facility covers key pre-construction activities, bridging projects to traditional bank project financing, and is structured to upsize to $100 million as Zanskar’s portfolio scales.
The financing transaction strengthens Zanskar’s ability to commercialize its pipeline of naturally occurring geothermal systems and sets a scalable financing precedent for greenfield geothermal as a recognized asset class across the United States.
The Wilson Sonsini team that advised Zanskar on the transaction included Scott Zimmermann, Jason Slagle, Nicole Gambino, Bob O’Connor, Jordana Palgon, and Jenae Sharp.
He has extensive experience with major FERC proceedings involving energy market rules, generator and load interconnection procedures, and the development of electric transmission facilities and natural gas infrastructure. Matt specializes in crafting novel arguments that combine his unparalleled experience at FERC with his understanding of the relevant statutes, regulations, and court precedent, as well as in representing clients at every stage of the regulatory proceeding, including initial pleadings, rehearing requests, and appeals, where necessary.
Matt also represents clients in negotiations involving the development of both energy infrastructure and digital infrastructure. He has particular expertise in negotiating FERC-jurisdictional agreements and in applying his experience with the relevant rules and regulations to secure the most favorable outcome for his clients.
As FERC’s general counsel, Matt oversaw a team of more than 200 lawyers on all manner of adjudicatory and rulemaking matters and was involved in nearly every aspect of the commission’s work, including supervising the its activity in federal courts throughout the country. He has extensive knowledge of FERC rules and regulations under the Federal Power Act and Natural Gas Act, particularly with respect to energy markets and the development of electric transmission facilities and interstate natural gas pipelines.
Prior to becoming general counsel, Matt was a legal advisor to FERC Commissioner Richard Glick and an attorney-advisor in FERC’s Office of General Counsel. Before joining FERC, Matt served as a law clerk to the Honorable Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and the Honorable Jesse M. Furman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Matt is a lecturer in law at Yale Law School, where he teaches Advanced State and Federal Electricity Law.
He has extensive experience with major FERC proceedings involving energy market rules, generator and load interconnection procedures, and the development of electric transmission facilities and natural gas infrastructure. Matt specializes in crafting novel arguments that combine his unparalleled experience at FERC with his understanding of the relevant statutes, regulations, and court precedent, as well as in representing clients at every stage of the regulatory proceeding, including initial pleadings, rehearing requests, and appeals, where necessary.
Matt also represents clients in negotiations involving the development of both energy infrastructure and digital infrastructure. He has particular expertise in negotiating FERC-jurisdictional agreements and in applying his experience with the relevant rules and regulations to secure the most favorable outcome for his clients.
As FERC’s general counsel, Matt oversaw a team of more than 200 lawyers on all manner of adjudicatory and rulemaking matters and was involved in nearly every aspect of the commission’s work, including supervising the its activity in federal courts throughout the country. He has extensive knowledge of FERC rules and regulations under the Federal Power Act and Natural Gas Act, particularly with respect to energy markets and the development of electric transmission facilities and interstate natural gas pipelines.
Prior to becoming general counsel, Matt was a legal advisor to FERC Commissioner Richard Glick and an attorney-advisor in FERC’s Office of General Counsel. Before joining FERC, Matt served as a law clerk to the Honorable Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and the Honorable Jesse M. Furman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Matt is a lecturer in law at Yale Law School, where he teaches Advanced State and Federal Electricity Law.
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Use
- Accessibility