Helping the industry innovate in a changing environment

Energy and Natural Resources

Our Energy team understands this fundamental change and how it affects your business, whether you are in the power, renewables, mining, commodities trading, oil and gas, waste, water or hydrogen markets. We advise the regulated, investors, developers and other key industry stakeholders, including governments.

Our team walks alongside you during your project lifecycle, including inception, development, completion, operation and sale. We cover the legal, geographical, commercial and geopolitical aspects of your business across its entire value chain.  

We handle the full spectrum of your legal needs in the industry, from finance and project development to regulatory, corporate transactional, restructuring and dispute resolution. Our lawyers approach every issue with sustainability and ESG in mind.  

With 400+ lawyers in over 40 countries, we can help you wherever you do business. We become a part of your team and your decision-making process, sharing insights about what shareholders need and what’s trending.  

Our experience covers development, construction, financing, M&A, sales, and investing in a diverse range of renewables and related projects. These include renewable power generation projects, energy storage facilities, utility-scale, distributed and residential solar, onshore, offshore and floating wind, biomass, and other innovations and technology-based matters. We also advise in tax, environmental, real estate, IP, employment, dispute resolution and arbitration matters.

Our offices work together seamlessly on cross-border projects, and to the extent our experience is limited in a specific jurisdiction, our colleagues with specialist knowledge are called upon to assist in domestic projects to ensure that our clients get access to the relevant expertise at all times.

We also have an open source approach, sharing best practice and explaining complex concepts through thought leadership and free global and regional guides. These platforms and resources mean you can understand challenges and opportunities in several jurisdictions without needing to search in multiple locations.

We advise corporate off-takers (in a wide range of industries), generators, funders and licensed suppliers across more than 30 countries, so we fully understand the drivers and issues from all perspectives.

Our team also knows what it’s like to walk in your shoes. When we advise you on a corporate PPA, we bring to the table our own experience as the first law firm in the world to have signed a corporate PPA as an off-taker. Our entry into a corporate PPA with NextEnergy is a major milestone in our firm’s journey to decarbonize and supports our commitment to halving our greenhouse gas emissions in absolute terms by 2030.

We of course help you consider PPA objectives against material risks and interactions with other key project agreements, including availability, outage, connections, curtailment and balancing. But we also help you with the transfer and use of all relevant project and environmental attributes (for example, EU GoOs, international IRECs), the sleeving of electricity under supply agreements, and the optimization of sleeved renewable electricity with other price hedging arrangements.  

Above all, we’re innovators. Our team created the “hybrid” virtual power purchase agreement (vPPA), and drafted for the European Federation of Energy Traders (EFET) the standard financially settled and physically settled PPAs, the standard GoO and REGO Certificates Master Agreement and the standard Hydrogen GoO Master Agreement. 

We’ll provide comprehensive advice to guide you through the full process of implementing a PPA and ensure you achieve a successful outcome.