Solar Energy

We offer practical solutions and experience-based guidance to address your needs and concerns. Our goal is to develop the structure to best suit and protect your investments. We have been involved in and documented virtually every type of acquisition and joint development structure for renewable energy projects and facilities. Many of these arrangements have remained in place for upward of 10 years. We regularly represent a wide variety of clients, including major utility holding companies, manufacturers, large international IPPs, private equity and venture capital funds, investment banks, and others in complex M&A and joint venture transactions. Our work also includes helping large multinational companies enter the U.S. solar market.

Real Estate and Siting: Our attorneys can assist your solar energy business with the numerous real estate issues you may encounter. We provide creative solutions to these real estate issues, including leasing and other arrangements, to achieve your facility construction and financing goals. In the context of both mergers and asset transfers, our Solar Energy attorneys play an important role in ensuring that all appropriate due diligence is quickly and efficiently completed and that real-estate-related transactions run smoothly for you.

Additionally, our Solar Energy Team is skilled at navigating siting issues for solar projects, both on private and public lands. We thoroughly understand the U.S. Bureau of Land Management permitting process and are well versed in state regulations for the granting of leases, easements, and rights-of-way for solar energy projects. Whether your project will be sited on federal, state, or private lands, we have the experience and knowledge to provide effective counsel for your real estate and siting issues.

Power Purchase Agreements and SRECs: With extensive experience in negotiating power and SREC sales contracts, including with public and municipal utilities and other distributed generation offtakers, our Solar Energy Team can assist you with retail and wholesale electric sales contracts, power purchase agreements, curtailment agreements, station power supply arrangements, SREC purchase agreements, contracts providing for specialized services by utilities to their customers, agreements implementing delivery service tariffs, agreements with alternative electric suppliers, outsourcing and system acquisition agreements, and agreements between banks and utilities (or related entities) involving loans or other credit arrangements.

Our team regularly assists solar developers in preparing responses to requests for proposals for renewable energy. Our attorneys have successfully negotiated and secured PPAs for solar developers across the country, and we have substantial experience in structuring futures commodities agreements, including renewable energy credit agreements and related hedges. Through this experience, our Solar Energy Team has developed a considerable understanding of the inner-workings of the renewable energy credit markets, which can be beneficial in both structuring your acquisition of solar generation assets and operating the business post-acquisition.

Construction and Procurement: Foley has significant experience with contract negotiations for the construction of solar energy facilities. Having regularly represented developers, contractors, and financing parties, our attorneys are well versed in the issues that arise during and after construction of solar energy facilities. We work with you early to help avoid and minimize disputes. Our team also has successfully structured various vendor- and contractor-provided financing in the solar space. In addition, we have negotiated supply and procurement agreements with virtually every major supplier of key components of a solar project, from solar module suppliers to manufacturers of mirrors and turbines for CSP projects. Our experience and strong working relationships with construction and supply counterparties allow us to guide you through these potentially costly areas in a timely and cost-efficient manner.

Project Finance: We have one of the top solar project finance teams in the U.S. legal industry. Our team has been structuring and financing energy facilities in the United States for more than 20 years, including acting as lead counsel on dozens of lease and tax-equity financed facilities. We have worked on some of the highest-profile solar leases in the country, including the leveraged-lease structure, which we developed, for Nevada Solar One and the single-investor sale/leasebacks used for several university facilities across the country. From preparing financeable project documents to tax structuring to the negotiation of finance documents, we thoroughly understand the issues and challenges of solar project finance.

Our Solar Energy Team has significant experience with the federal and state regulatory approval process required for acquisition, construction, interconnection, and operation of solar energy facilities, as well as the approvals required for long-term power purchase agreements and transmission of energy generated by such facilities. Having represented both solar developers and transmission owners, we are experienced in addressing the issues involved in the integration of renewable resources into the existing transmission grid in a safe and reliable manner.

Our experience with developing and advocating for new market concepts and legislative or regulatory solutions within the energy industry is especially valuable to you in the evolving regulatory environment of solar energy, where the legal framework may be incomplete or the rules are just now being written. In addition, Foley has been involved in drafting and negotiating legislation and regulations in various state jurisdictions to create the framework necessary for your solar projects to move forward.

For decades, we have provided sophisticated tax advice on federal and state tax issues associated with the operation of energy industry businesses. This knowledge includes extensive experience with Section 45, 48, and 29 of the Internal Revenue Code and other federal tax incentives for particular kinds of electric energy production, and various forms of specialized tax treatments related to operations meeting particular characteristics. State taxes have become more of an issue now that the state tax regimes — originally designed to operate on a regulated utility industry — are applicable to deregulated and competitive participants. Foley's Solar Energy Team can readily evaluate the impact of such state tax laws and will work with our Public Policy practitioners to develop strategies and lobbying solutions to modify tax policies to better suit your objectives.

In addition to tax guidance, Foley provides counsel on federal and state incentives for solar energy development. The landscape for federal and state incentives is constantly changing, and our attorneys continually look for ways to maximize state and federal incentives and help improve your bottom lines.

Recognizing that new technologies will be fundamental to the long-term success of the solar industry, Foley’s Solar Energy Team draws on the resources of experienced members of our Intellectual Property Department’s Green Energy Technologies Practice. Our attorneys include registered professional engineers in the utility industry with extensive experience in evaluating, protecting, licensing IP rights, and identifying and avoiding conflict with the IP rights of others for a variety of mechanical and electromechanical green energy technologies. Our team understands the details of the new technologies and can develop and implement effective protection and licensing strategies for you.

Learn More