Renewable Energy

Energy production and global warming are the major issues of our time. Renewable energy is the principal solution. Our Renewable Energy group and our clients are leading the charge to provide renewable energy worldwide.

Our Renewable Energy team is a global market leader. We’ve been working on renewables projects for almost 40 years, and today our team works across more than 25 Orrick offices on four continents, representing prominent industry participants in virtually every sector of the industry, including solar, wind, geothermal, biofuels, hydro, landfill gas and storage.

Our team members not only understand the legal aspects of renewable energy transactions, but we are intimately familiar with the key commercial issues that drive our clients’ businesses and success. For this reason, the most successful industry participants consistently select us for their most important transactions in renewable energy, including development, finance and M&A: 

Development 

Our lawyers are routinely called on to provide counsel on greenfield project development and transaction structures. In California, the heart of the U.S. renewables market, in the past three years we represented over 30 different bidders before the state utilities’ solicitations for new renewables projects, including on more than 150 bids for new renewables projects, totaling many thousands of megawatts. We also represent leading developers on synthetic/virtual corporate PPAs, military project development, offtake hedges, permitting, real estate entitlements, EPC, O&M, transmission and interconnection, and all other aspects of renewables project development.

  • M&A 

    Across the European continent, the Americas, Asia, and Africa, we represent many of the most prominent renewables industry participants on their most important M&A transactions, both buying and selling renewables projects and companies. Our clients come from around the globe, and we are known for helping the largest players in the industry execute cross-border transactions.

    Finance

    We have assisted clients in financing billions of dollars of renewables projects involving every conceivable type of debt (including bridge, construction, term conversion, long term, letter of credit facility and back-leverage financing), equity (including all varieties of tax equity and cash equity) financing and lease transactions.

    Clients benefit from our depth and breadth in the renewables industry, which covers virtually every area of the business, including development, finance, M&A, tax structuring, loan guarantee programs, permitting, real estate, EPC, energy storage, regulatory and intellectual property.