Climate Change

Representative Client Work

Project Development

Counsel to independent power developer building the first ever integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) project in the U.S. to use carbon capture and sequestration. Advice on federal Dept. of Energy grant application and federal tax credit application, Clean Air Act greenhouse gas regulation, federal carbon sequestration policy, and NEPA compliance.

The project, to be built near Odessa, Texas, has been awarded $350 million in federal grants and is planned to start construction in 2010. The plant will integrate proven carbon capture and gasification technologies designed to achieve a 90% carbon capture, the highest ever proposed.

Counsel to a timberland owner on development of California’s protocol for forestry-based emission offsets, and on the emission offsets provisions on pending federal legislation.

Emission offset markets have the potential to offer significant economic opportunities to companies with carbon sequestration resources, and to provide alternatives for companies needing emissions offsets.

Counsel to the largest private composter in the U.S., processing over one million pounds of biomass per day and serving over two million customers.

Company is building commercial methane digesters to capture methane and generate electricity from biomass to sell back to the grid.

Litigation

Represented regional air authority in successful defense of a Title V air operating permit issued to Washington State’s only coal-fired power plant. Permit was challenged by environmental plaintiffs on the grounds that it fails to include limits on carbon dioxide and mercury emissions. They also sought more stringent nitrogen oxide limit for the plant. Appeal was heard by Washington's Pollution Control Hearings Board, which upheld permit on summary judgment.

Appellants sought a ruling that the air authority was obligated to develop emission limits based on a general nuisance standard, in advance of pending regulatory action on both mercury and carbon dioxide emissions at the federal and state level. The Board ruled that an air operating permit is a collection of existing applicable requirements, and that the Air Authority did not have the power to establish new emission limits when issuing an air operating permit. Appellants also argued that new limits should be established under the State RACT standard. The Board ruled that permitting agencies are not required to update its RACT determination for a source when it issues an operating permit, and that the requirements that exist at the time the permit is issued are RACT for purposes of the operating permit program.

Representing a regional cold storage company, in a challenge to the state and federal environmental review of a new warehouse facility currently being permitted and constructed by a port district.

Not only does the environmental analysis fail to account for the introduction of hazardous materials onto the site, the port also ignored the requirement to assess the climate change impacts of the additional vehicle trips generated by the project, as well as the substantial electricity demand that will be required upon build-out, in violation of NEPA and EPA’s recent endangerment finding.

Regulatory Compliance

• Advising forestry and agricultural clients on formulation of emissions offset policies tied to sequestration of carbon in forests, agricultural lands, or deep underground.
• Advising manufacturing clients on greenhouse gas reporting rules.
• Advised a regional trade association on emerging national and local climate change initiatives impacting commercial and residential real estate markets in preparation for 2009 legislative session.