Development of bioenergy and biomanufacturing facilities has surged in recent years in response to legal mandates to reduce the vast amounts of organic, medical, and plastic waste heading to our landfills. Our Bioenergy and Biomanufacturing Team provides multi-faceted service for development of commercial-scale biofuel and recycling facilities around the country.
Ballard Spahr's Bioenergy and Biomanufacturing Team leverages decades of experience in finance, tax, real estate, construction, and environmental matters to support clients across the bioenergy industry. Our experience spans the range of facilities that process biosolids, plastics, and waste from food, farming, and industry to create recycled biofuels and related products that reduce landfilling and cut fossil fuel burning and greenhouse gases.
Our nationally recognized finance lawyers have extensive experience covering the spectrum of financial, regulatory, and business issues involved in solid waste/energy facility development, ownership, and operation. Our clients are engaged in groundbreaking work to transform biosolids (such as wood, sludge, and plant crops), food waste, plastics, farming wastes, and industrial wastes (such as tallow) into products ranging from biofuels (including renewable gas, diesel, and jet fuel) to fertilizers, filtering media, plastic pellets, and animal feedstock.
Our attorneys represent developers, issuers, lenders, investors, and investment banks in complex capital structures combining equity, governmental funding, commercial bank loans, and taxable and tax-exempt debt offerings in the capital markets. We help clients take advantage of federal and state tax incentives—including tax-exempt bonds, the Renewable Fuel Standard Program, Clean Renewable Energy Bonds, solar and clean coal investment tax credits, and renewable energy production tax credits. We also handle recapitalizations, workouts, and restructurings of troubled bioenergy facilities. The Bioenergy Team has decades of experience with the "dirt" aspects of facility and project development, including land use, construction, and environmental concerns.
Our team has participated in more than $10 billion in solid waste and pollution control financings over the last two decades, including dozens of transactions involving tax-exempt facilities.
Experience
- Served as bond purchaser counsel in the financing for a project consisting of the acquisition, construction, and equipping of a solid waste treatment and disposal and recycling facility to include the processing of solid food waste and biosolids to produce fertilizer, renewable electricity, and renewable natural gas in California.
- Participated in the financing of the development of a biofuels production facility in Oregon that converts woody biomass from timber harvest residuals and forest thinning activities into jet, diesel, and gasoline blendstock fuels.
- Served as counsel to the underwriters in connection with the construction of one of the largest domestic anaerobic digestion facilities in the country.
