Renewable Energy Pavilion

Synopsis

Energy transition and decarbonization efforts are spearheading radical change in the energy sector and beyond and attracting even greater attention to the renewable energy industry globally. With oil and gas majors, private equity investors and other energy players entering the renewables industry and/or growing their ESG and renewable business, a variety of investment possibilities emerge. This presentation will discuss trends and challenges in the acquisition and financing of renewable energy projects and companies, such as insights into the latest platform deals and commentary on the future of investing in renewable energy.

Speaker Bio

Becky Diffen is a partner in the Austin, Texas, office of Norton Rose Fulbright, where she focuses her practice on mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, project development and tax equity financings of renewable energy, energy storage, power generation and transmission projects — including wind, solar, battery storage, green hydrogen, geothermal, waste-to-energy and other technologies. She also has experience advising clients on Texas regulatory law. Diffen has over 20 years of experience in the renewable energy industry and previously worked as a utility-scale wind power developer.

She is a coauthor of Wind Law — the first and only legal treatise focused on the wind industry — and her new treatise, Wind and Solar Law, was published in late 2021. She has been recognized by Chambers Global and Chambers USA, was honored as a 2021 Law 360 Project Finance MVP and in 2019 was named the C3E Law and Finance award winner by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Diffen serves on the board of directors and executive committee of the national Women of Renewable Industries and Sustainable Energy organization, as well as serving as a member of the Advisory Board of the WRISE Austin Chapter. She is a magna cum laude graduate of Carleton College and earned her J.D. with honors from the University of Texas School of Law, where she served as editor-in-chief of the Texas Journal of Oil, Gas, & Energy Law and now teaches a seminar on renewable energy law as an adjunct professor.

Synopsis: Texas is largely known as the oil and gas capital of America. This often brands the state as polluting and an energy transition laggard when, in reality, Texas is a national leader in renewable energy. With 36 gigawatts of operational assets, Texas is the No. 1 state for onshore wind and second for utility-scale solar capacity with 9.2 GW. Even more impressive are Texas’s future commitments to clean power. Just in 2021, the lone star state added 17.9 GW of solar, wind and battery capacity to its development pipeline — by far the most of any in the country. If Texas is not known for its climate mitigation policies, what are the drivers enabling it to be a clean power vanguard?

Speaker Bio

Marcelo Ortega is a senior analyst within Rystad Energy’s Renewables Research Team focused on the solar, wind and energy storage markets of America. Ortega oversees maintaining the quality and preciseness of the asset level data of Rystad Energy´s RenewableCube. He then leverages this database to create market insights that then get published in the form of commentaries and reports. Before joining Rystad, he held various research positions. He has designed renewable investment policies and analyzed power market tariff schemes. Ortega holds a master’s degree in energy technologies from the University of Cambridge.

Synopsis: The oil and gas industry continues to evolve and demonstrate resilience despite uncertainty. With persistent blackouts and wildfires threatening the reliability of our energy production and supply chain, companies across global sectors are committing to clean energy, sustainability and reducing emissions, including those in oil and gas. The players at the negotiation table have evolved and the oil and gas industry is experiencing a period of growth and fundamental reshaping. While the oil and gas industry and the renewables and storage sectors seem an unlikely partnership, oil and gas producers are uniquely situated to utilize battery storage and renewable technologies to power their operations at all stages of the oil and gas recovery process.

Speaker Bio

Danielle Garbien represents developers, private equity investors, energy companies and hedge funds in a wide range of complex energy financing, investments, power purchase agreements and commodity and hedging transactions, with a focus on power, renewable energy and energy storage. She has experience negotiating and drafting EPC contracts, REC purchase agreements, turbine supply agreements, operating and management agreements and other procurement agreements for energy and infrastructure projects. She also advises on structuring hedges for the financing and acquisition of energy facilities, energy storage arrangements, including tolling agreements, capacity contracts, revenue puts and heat rate call options.

Garbien is an active committee member of the EEI Contract Drafting Committee, the committee that created the EEI Master Power Purchase and Sale Agreement. She also is the co-chair of the Bracewell Women’s Network. In addition, she serves on the board of the Women’s Energy Network Greater NYC chapter and is a mentor in WEN NYC's newly established mentor program.

Synopsis: The Inflation Reduction Act ushers in the largest clean energy tax credit package in U.S. history. Signed into law on Aug. 16, 2022, the act also is expected to expand transmission line development, jump-start carbon reduction and sequestration technologies, accelerate decarbonization of the power sector and vehicle fleet and promote a host of other climate policies. Jim Cole, transactional tax partner at Latham & Watkins, will address the new IRA’s impact on tax incentives for wind, solar, hydrogen and other clean energy projects. Additionally, he will discuss how carbon capture tax credit rules are simplified and expanded and insights on the new tax credit transfer regimes.

Speaker Bio

Jim Cole, a partner in the Houston office of Latham & Watkins LLP, practices transactional tax involving mergers, acquisitions, financings, restructurings and capital markets transactions. He regularly advises publicly traded partnerships, master limited partnerships, corporations, developers, private equity firms, lenders and investment banks on transactions across the energy industry, including the upstream, midstream, downstream, oil field services and alternative energy sectors. His practice includes a focus on energy tax incentives for wind projects, solar projects and the section 45Q federal income tax credit for carbon capture projects. Cole has been quoted in both Bloomberg Tax and Tax Notes with respect to the section 45Q federal income tax credit. He was named to Turnarounds & Workouts’ 2020 and 2021 lists of Bankruptcy Tax Specialists in the Nation’s Major Law Firms. Cole currently sits on the board of the Renewable Energy Alliance of Houston. Prior to law school, he practiced as a Certified Public Accountant in the tax practice of an international accounting firm.