Davis Polk’s Environmental Practice Group has been providing sophisticated and practical environmental law advice for over 40 years. This wealth of experience, as well as an ability and commitment to draw resources from the full array of practice areas within our firm, enables us to provide innovative solutions to the most complex and novel problems our clients face.
Corporate. Corporate practice is one of our core strengths, and we regularly advise clients with respect to a broad array of transactions:
- Mergers and Acquisitions. We perform thorough, targeted and cost-effective environmental due diligence investigations and are experienced in working with technical consultants to provide our clients with value-added advice and information, including cost estimates for key environmental risks. We are actively involved in negotiating complex contractual protections and structuring transactions to address environmental issues, as well as obtaining environmental insurance when useful.
- Capital Markets. We advise investment banks and corporate clients on environmental disclosure matters and SEC reporting requirements in the context of IPOs, debt and equity offerings and mandatory periodic filings of public companies.
- Credit, Insolvency and Restructuring. In credit transactions, we evaluate environmental liabilities and negotiate appropriate contractual arrangements. We also advise clients undergoing or financing a restructuring, where environmental liabilities often present complex legal and transactional issues.
- Project Finance. We are well-equipped to counsel our clients on complicated, cross-border project finance transactions, having worked with environmental lawyers from around the world on matters unique to project finance, such as compliance with the Equator Principles.
- Real Estate. In real estate transactions, we negotiate contracts with extensive environmental diligence rights, and then we conduct the diligence, usually working closely with technical consultants who thoroughly investigate the property pursuant to our guidance. This information helps us advise our clients on valuation and other risk allocation issues.
In addition to transactional work, we also provide our clients with guidance on a variety of other corporate environmental matters, which has included drafting environmental policies and advising on sustainability issues. Our practice necessarily includes actively monitoring legislative and regulatory developments in the environmental area.
We regularly represent clients in or with respect to environmentally sensitive businesses including:
- Oil and gas
- Utilities and power generation
- Coal
- Chemical
- Real estate development
Litigation. We advise clients on their most difficult and challenging environmental disputes. Recent projects have included advising on constitutional, statutory and contractual challenges to allocation of environmental risk among private parties. We have been instrumental in assisting our clients in settling, often on a novel basis, environmental disputes that might significantly affect their operations and bottom line.
Climate Change and Alternative Energy. Our climate change and alternative energy practice has naturally evolved from our years of counseling businesses on environmental matters. Climate change issues arise in all areas of our work, from M&A to project finance, and we have found that addressing these issues requires a strong grounding in traditional environmental law as well as the ability to assess and keep abreast of a constant stream of new developments—both of which we bring to the table. Our work has included:
- Advising clients on obtaining and trading greenhouse gas emissions offsets
- Crafting disclosure related to climate change issues for companies in all affected industries—from oil and gas and coal to insurance and real estate to solar and wave power
- Providing regulatory advice in connection with emissions trading and related derivative products
Our representation of clients involved in alternative energy businesses is extensive and involves all of our major practice areas (M&A, capital markets, derivatives, credit, project finance, etc.) and a wide variety of industries, including:
- Solar
- Wind
- Hydroelectric/hydrokinetic
- Nuclear
- Ethanol and other alternative fuels
