FOCUSED EXPERTISE

Our practice

Our practice encompasses the full range of legal services associated with the development and financing of utility scale renewable energy projects. We also incorporate unique expertise in distributed energy production, energy efficiency, energy storage, waste stream management and controlled environment agriculture.

UTILITY SCALE WIND

The APB team’s collective experience in the utility scale wind sector dates from the mid-1980s. For the last 15 years we have been at the cutting edge of wind energy project development and finance. We have broad and in-depth experience in project and portfolio acquisition and divestitures, site acquisition, offtake and hedging agreements, operations and maintenance agreements, turbine supply and BOP agreements and REC sales agreements.

We have pioneered work during the past decade on turbine frame acquisition agreements and have completed numerous tax equity and debt finance transactions in the sector. We represented the developer in the negotiation of the nation's first offshore wind PPA and represent two of the largest global offshore wind developers in their offshore wind development activities.

UTILITY SCALE SOLAR

Our utility scale solar experience encompasses acquisition, development and financing transactions throughout the sector. We have negotiated several billion dollars of solar panel acquisitions, involving both project-specific and frame agreements, and have been involved in the acquisition and subsequent development and financing of individual solar projects and portfolios throughout the United States. We have comprehensive expertise in site acquisition agreements, offtake agreements, panel supply, EPC and BOP agreements, O & M agreements, SREC monetization, joint venture agreements and tax equity and debt finance agreements.

The firm has extensive experience with the project development and financing of utility scale solar projects in Latin America. This team is led by one of the few top tier U.S. project finance practitioners, a native of Venezuela, who combines exceptional project finance expertise with deep regional commercial and cultural knowledge.

DISTRIBUTED ENERGY

Distributed production of energy will be a key supply component to meet increased electricity demand in the coming years.  However, given the size of these transactions, most law firms are structurally incapable of providing cost-effective representation. Our structure, focused on senior practitioners operating in a low overhead environment, allows us to operate within the budgetary constraints required for commercial and industrial projects to succeed. We represent several of the leading national C & I developers in the solar and CHP spaces and have repeatedly demonstrated our ability to execute on time and on budget.

We are pioneers in the structuring of virtual power plant projects, where multiple residential and commercial and industrial facilities are coordinated through comprehensive software solutions in the deployment of demand response, generation and storage solutions across multiple states and regional transmission systems.

BATTERY STORAGE

Battery storage is a transformational technology in the sustainability sector, converting low-cost intermittent energy into high value dispatchable power. We represent the project development arm of one of the leading U.S. battery storage manufacturers and one of the largest global battery storage project developers.

We have been involved in the development and financing of some of the largest solar + storage projects in the country;  to date we have closed over 5,000 MWh of storage projects throughout the United States.

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ENERGY EFFICIENCY

The energy efficiency market, both retrofit and new build, has enormous potential, but poses many obstacles to market entrants: the uncertainty of savings measurement; the pass-through leasing structure of the real estate industry; complex tax and accounting issues presented by traditional ESCO models; and disproportionately high transaction costs. Our transactional experience includes representation of one of the nation’s leading efficiency finance platforms that directly addresses these structural impediments through an “efficiency-as-a-service” model. In addition to specific transactions, we have assisted this client in the preparation of form documents enabling increased transaction velocity and lower cost while including necessary protections to the client and its lenders.

CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT AGRICULTURE

The U.S. agricultural sector is in the early stages of a multibillion-dollar project financed build out of controlled environment greenhouses. We are working with the first equity fund dedicated to financing this build out and have pioneered the application of project finance techniques to this rapidly expanding sector - effectively de-risking supply, offtake and construction. We drafted and negotiated the industry's first executed produce purchase agreement (PPA) with many of the major grocery retailers in the United States, incorporating long term take or pay commitments on a fixed price escalating basis.