Holland & Hart has announced the elevation of twelve attorneys to its partnership, in areas as diverse as corporate, real estate, environmental, and intellectual property law. The new partners include transactional lawyer Ashley Wald (pictured), who works with clients in the renewable energy space. Wald advises on many aspects of project finance and development. Her expertise extends to financing, site permits, construction, power offtake agreements, and the operation and management of sites. Before moving to Holland & Hart, Wald accrued significant cross-border experience as an associate based at DLA Piper’s outpost in Beijing.
Wald has done much of her legal work in the western and southern United States. A few highlights of Wald’s extensive transactional record include acting as lead counsel to the Southern California Public Power Authority in its acquisition of a 531 MW natural gas plant in Nevada, advising a municipal utility in California on the procurement of 250 MW of solar power, acting for the borrower in the financing of a natural gas storage field in Mississippi, and providing counsel to a solar developer in relation to the acquisition and bond financing of solar photovoltaic facilities in Colorado, among many other engagements.
In an exclusive interview with IFLR1000, Wald reflected on the impact of regulatory changes on players in the renewable energy space. In Wald’s analysis, the fluctuating positions of regulators with respect to tax credits have not served the interest of developers.
“The production tax credit has been stopped and started a number of times. The investment tax credit has the same problem. The credits are in place for insufficient durations of time, and they’re not certain to be renewed at any time, so you have projects trying to be built and financed by certain drop dead dates, and every developer has to meet the same timeframe because it is unclear whether the credits will be extended to allow a project to come on-line the following year,” Wald observed.
An upshot of the inconsistency is that there may be a surge in wind turbine orders one year, and the next year, no one is buying them, Wald explained.
“Tax credits play a large role in how the economics of renewable projects work out. If you can’t count on those credits being in place, the financials of projects may not work. Project developers would like to have more certainty than they are getting from Congress,” she said.
Many states have a renewable portfolio standard mandating that a certain percentage of energy from electricity suppliers come from renewable resources, Wald noted.
“The big news recently is that Governor Brown in California was proposing that California’s current RPS, which is 33 percent by 2030 – the highest of any state – be raised to 50 percent by 2030. When you have that kind of legislative incentive, that can drive the renewable market as well,” she said.
Wald identified solar as an industry undergoing rapid development, and consolidation, as smaller firms get bought up by larger and more experienced solar companies.
“That transition and growth in a resource-specific industry shows that the solar industry is maturing. Natural gas prices have been dropping, and people wonder what that will do to renewables as well,” Wald noted.
Wald holds a J.D. from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and a B.A. from Colorado College.