Energy & Infrastructure
Experienced energy and infrastructure attorneys who understand your industry
Capabilities at a glance
- Strong and lasting relationships built on trust and good communication. We bring a unified team mentality to large projects, because we know that’s what works.
- In-depth industry knowledge based on decades of experience working both with a diverse range of clients and with regulators at state and federal level.
- We pride ourselves on our multidisciplinary approach, with team members working together seamlessly across industry sectors and across areas of law.
- Pragmatic, business-focused legal advice carefully tailored to support your business goals.
Shared purpose with clients on energy and infrastructure law
The same spirit that drives energy and infrastructure projects helps the Quarles Energy & Infrastructure Practice Group provide you with excellent legal services: strong relationships, trust and good communication. We pride ourselves on working well together as a group and as a firm, working with a shared purpose with our clients and always offering efficient and effective legal advice and work product. Everything we do is focused on giving you streamlined, holistic legal services tailored to your needs. And as a full-service law firm, we will draw on the knowledge of our colleagues in other departments as needed, because we understand energy and infrastructure projects require a wide range of skills and experience.
Agility and experience across a wide range of energy and infrastructure projects
Our energy and infrastructure lawyers have a range and depth of industry knowledge few can match. We advise publicly and privately held corporations, national and international energy developers and suppliers, lenders, financial institutions, governments and governmental agencies, and nonprofit energy market participants, including Native American entities, on strategic infrastructure projects across a wide range of industry sectors, including power generation, transmission and distribution, natural gas distribution, renewable energy, deregulated and restructured markets, transportation, and water and wastewater. We provide advice that recognizes the complexity of today's energy and infrastructure industries, where issues involve critical investments, major public policy decisions and politically sensitive decision-making.
Experience
- Energy regulation
- Public-private partnership (P3) transactions and approvals
- Power plant and other infrastructure transactions and due diligence
- Environmental permitting, remediation and cleanups
- Infrastructure development on Native American lands
- Water rights and transactions
Successes
- Quarles partnered with Midwestern utilities to obtain approvals for the one of the first utility-scale solar energy projects in Wisconsin.
- We helped achieve completion of the first P3 project — construction and operation of a privately-owned highway toll bridge — in Illinois.
- Provided due diligence to the lender underwriting the construction of a 200-megawatt, 133-turbine wind farm in Wisconsin.
- Represented Osaka Gas USA in its joint venture with Summit Ridge Energy to construct, own and operate more than 50 megawatts of solar projects throughout Illinois.
- Advised the owner of a utility-scale solar project on metering issues with one investor-owned public utility and two electric cooperatives.
- Advised Illinois wind farm developers on interconnection agreements, power purchase agreements and agricultural impact mitigation agreements.
- Performed due diligence for the primary lender for a wind farm project in Arizona.
- Represented a wind farm developer in Illinois with documents for initial rounds of funding.
News & Insights
Energy & Infrastructure Focus Areas
Energy Litigation and Appeals
We regularly represent clients in a broad range of litigation and appeals — both in an administrative or regulatory context as well as in judicial proceedings. Our work includes representation in licensing proceedings, contested rulemakings, complaint cases, rate cases and other high-stakes matters before regulatory agencies. We also handle judicial proceedings, mediation, arbitration and other forms of alternative dispute resolution, including taking and defending appeals to intermediate and final appellate courts. We maintain a level of experience not only about the relevant legal framework and the unique procedural aspects of numerous forums, but also about developments in the political and business arenas that affect energy-related matters.
Energy Regulatory
At Quarles, our experienced energy lawyers know that in this dynamic sector of the economy it is hugely beneficial, perhaps even business-critical, to avoid being caught off guard by regulatory changes. With technological advancements and more competitive energy markets, states are rapidly changing their regulatory frameworks accordingly.
Energy Transactions and Due Diligence
Quarles represents investor-owned public utilities, renewables developers, municipal utilities and other power generation developers, owners and operators in the purchase, sale, construction, permitting, operation and maintenance of wind, solar, coal-fired, gas-fired, nuclear, waste-to-energy and biomass facilities. Power generation projects require experienced and insightful legal advice to protect client interests and to ensure compliance with a complex and ever-evolving set of laws, regulations and public utility commission decisions, orders, guidance and practices. Our attorneys have experience in guiding generation projects through their entire life cycles — from concept to decommissioning — and provide practical, real-world solutions that consider our clients’ business plans and goals in the context of the relevant energy laws.
Infrastructure and Public-Private Partnerships
We are proud to provide our clients with truly comprehensive legal services, responding with agility and assertiveness to the obstacles they face at all stages of project development and operation. We have significant experience working with our clients on P3s and recognize from our prior representations that P3s require a multidisciplinary approach — calling upon our corporate support one day and our tax services the next.
Renewable Energy
The Quarles Energy & Infrastructure Practice Group has a dedicated team devoted to the alternative and renewable energy industries — a sector experiencing dynamic legal, market and cultural change. Our services include pre-project counseling; due diligence; facility siting; permitting; financing; transaction design and support; tax and incentive support; regulatory approval and ongoing compliance for construction, operation, mid-life upgrades and decommissioning; and dispute resolution related to renewable energy and related projects — all delivered efficiently and cost-effectively.
