Helping to Bring New Technologies to the Marketplace

Solutions to global energy-generation and environmental protection problems require the application of new technologies to harness renewable energy sources, create new materials, dramatically reduce the use of natural resources, and cut or eliminate emissions and wastes.

Latham understands that innovation is key to solving the world’s critical energy, natural resource and pollution problems, and represents technology companies as they innovate.

Latham represents emerging companies from the earliest stages of formation, financing and going public, to navigating the diverse legal and regulatory issues during ongoing operations. The firm also counsels venture capital and investment banking firms regarding company financing, and has deep expertise in project development, including citing and permitting, tax structuring and finance.

With its proven track record, the firm assists clients in developing for the cleantech sectors, including:

• Batteries
• Biofuels
• Desalinization
• Fuel Cells
• Geothermal
• Green Transportation 
• Hydropower
• Materials
• Solar
• Smart Grid
• Storage
• Transmission
• Waste and Recycling 
• Water
• Wind

A Multidisciplinary Approach

Latham assists cleantech clients across practice areas, including:

• Capital Markets
• Climate Change
• Government Contracts
• Intellectual Property Litigation
• Mergers & Acquisitions
• Private Equity
• Real Estate
• Tax

The team also has a long history of working on issues pertaining to energy and environmental regulation, government contracts, technology transactions and project finance.

Clean Energy Law Report Blog

Latham’s Clean Energy Law Report is a blog that covers all the latest environmental, regulatory, tax and financing news for clients, emerging companies and interested parties. Latham helps you to keep your finger on the pulse of recent trends, as well as identify and act on new opportunities.

Latham & Watkins’ lawyers have advised developers, sponsors, lenders and others on the largest, most complex projects in the cleantech industry. Recent cleantech work includes the representation of:

• Sponsors in the project financing for the development and operation of Alta Wind VI & VIII, two 150-megawatt wind power projects in California. The completion of the project brings the total capacity of the Alta Wind Energy Center to 1,020-megawatts and is the first gigawatt-scale wind energy facility in the United States.
• Chinook Energy, a renewable energy company, on federal financing and tax incentives and related environmental regulatory issues for a planned 40-megawatt car waste-to-energy project to gasify auto-shredder residue, generate electricity and recover commercially usable metals
• Danotek Motion Technologies in their Series B Preferred Stock financing (wind power), with investors Khosla Ventures and CMEA Capital
• Kleiner Perkins in their Series B Preferred Stock financing of Harvest Power
• Nevada Geothermal Power Company, Inc. as sponsor/borrower in obtaining a partial loan guarantee for a US$98.5 million loan to finance completion of the Blue Mountain Geothermal project, a 49.5-megawatt geothermal generation facility in northwestern Nevada
• European CleanTech (ECT), a Luxemburg shell company (SPAC – Special Purpose Acquisition Company) listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in the regulated market (Prime Standard), in its merger with the Electrawinds Group, a Belgian operator of renewable power generation installations 
• Zipcar, Inc. in its 2011 US$174 million IPO on NASDAQ