Energy & Utilities | McCarter & English, LLP

Staying ahead of developments in the energy industry is critical to energy consumers and providers alike. Our lawyers not only help clients manage their immediate regulatory, transactional, and litigation needs but also assist them in planning for and anticipating the future.

We represent clients that purchase all forms of energy and clients that re-sell and distribute that energy. We work with clients that generate electricity from fossil fuel and renewable energy generating facilities that they own or have contractual entitlement to the unit’s output. And we help large commercial energy customers—manufacturers, universities, hospitals, and more—obtain access to affordable and reliable energy through a range of options, including developing on-site microgrids, investing in renewable generation projects, or assembling power supply portfolios.

As climate change and regulatory and economic factors converge to make legacy generation sources increasingly less viable, we help clients examine options—from closing and repowering sites with cleaner technologies to selling sites for redevelopment to divesting interests in older technology—and understand the related environmental and regulatory obligations of these options.

Our multidisciplinary team assists companies in the energy sector and their customers with the full spectrum of legal needs, including:

Energy Finance & Development
Energy Counseling & Litigation
Corporate Business Transactions and Financings
Environmental Counseling & Litigation
Insurance Coverage
Real Estate
Real Property Tax Planning & Appeals

Assisted electric cooperatives with a merger or consolidation of generation and transmission cooperatives.

Serve as Special Gas Counsel to the Public Energy Authority of Kentucky (PEAK) since its inception in 1998. Negotiate municipal bond-financed, prepaid long-term natural gas supply purchases. Between 2018 and 2019, PEAK issued more than $2.2 billion in municipal bonds to prepay such purchase agreements. The client sells such gas to its members and more than two dozen municipalities at below market prices; their ratepayers will save millions in gas cost over the next 5-6 years

Negotiated the acquisition by the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority (NTUA) of approximately 268 miles of an interstate natural gas pipeline—and related compressor stations—to serve several Navajo Nation communities that would have lost service from the prior pipeline owner abandoning the line. On federal approval, the line will be transferred to NTUA with the prior owner providing funds for NTUA to integrate the line into its distribution system. We also helped NTUA obtain federal authorization to acquire and operate the interstate pipeline facilities.

Represented two Southwestern cities and a tribal authority in a Natural Gas Act interstate natural gas pipeline rate proceeding at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), winning a new discounted rate for the clients after litigation with their natural gas provider.

Obtained for the APGA a favorable ruling from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) interpreting the use of non-condensing technology on residential natural gas furnaces as a performance-related feature that cannot be eliminated by adopting an energy conservation standard under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act. The DOE correspondingly withdrew a proposed efficiency standard that would have required many residential consumers to replace non-condensing technology natural gas furnaces with costlier higher efficiency condensing technology gas furnaces or electric heat pumps.

Challenged the Return on Equity authorized for two separate electric utilities and negotiated favorable settlements on behalf of our electric cooperative client in several complaint proceedings, saving our client more than $7 million.

Served as lead transaction counsel, special gas counsel and commodity swap counsel for our client in a transaction that issued $446,760,000 of the District’s Gas Supply Revenue Bonds to purchase a 30-year supply of natural gas to be delivered to three Alabama gas districts—Clarke-Mobile Counties Gas District, The Marshall County Gas District, and The Southeast Alabama Gas District.

Negotiated new North American Energy Standards Board Base contracts for the purchase and sale of natural gas for an Alabama public utility with five major natural gas marketing companies, significantly expanding the utility’s options for purchasing natural gas for the customers of its municipal natural gas system at the lowest possible price and on the most reliable possible basis.

Obtained a favorable settlement for our public natural gas distributor client against an interstate pipeline that had requested a net triple-digit rate increase and numerous tariff changes that would have adversely affected service and imposed additional costs on affected customers, including our client. This was the first rate case filed by the pipeline in 17 years.

Negotiated a settlement of a pipeline rate case for a public gas distributor that cut a proposed rate increase by 80 percent and resulted in revisions to the pipeline’s rate structure that should provide long-term cost reductions.

Assisted in the negotiation and development of the approximately $1 billion public/private DC PLUG distribution facility undergrounding initiative, which included the use of securitized financing, subsequent legislative amendments, and the ongoing implementation of the program.

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