Alternative Energies
U.S. Conference of Mayors Signal Commitment to Renewable Energy

In our last post, we discussed an emerging trend of corporations and local governments taking decisive action on climate change in the absence of federal leadership.  Since that post, several excellent examples of this commitment have been announced, with perhaps the most compelling coming from the U.S. Conference of Mayors‘ 85th annual meeting this week.  Climate change and renewable energy were among the topics discussed at the meeting by leaders from more than 250 cities, and a number of powerful resolutions were adopted.  The full list of resolutions is well worth a read, but there are two in particular that warrant highlighting. First, the assembled city officials overwhelmingly adopted a resolution that set a goal for member communities to adopt 100{f24b02adee2102ff0c5f5079c50862fc8ba5fa53f8615b567037555463da2377} renewable energy by 2035. …

Wind Project Development: From a Legal Perspective

Recently, Alan Anderson and I were thrilled to be invited to present to a class at the Washburn University Law School.  For those of you that don’t know, Washburn has developed a truly exceptional energy and oil & gas law program (something that I dearly wish I could have had in law school), thanks in large part to the efforts of Prof. David Pierce.  When Prof. Pierce’s invites us to do just about anything, we usually jump at the chance. For this presentation, our goal was to provide a high-level but fairly comprehensive overview of the types of legal issues that arise during the main stages of a wind project’s design, construction and operation phases.  Interestingly, after we sat down to plan out …

Kansas Wind Project Property Tax: What Recent Changes Mean for Existing and Future Projects

On May 28, 2015, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed legislation that will have a significant impact on the future of wind generation in the state.  The history of the political struggle underlying this legislation is a topic worthy of its own post, but suffice it to say that SB 91 represents a compromise between the wind industry and a faction of legislators that have attempted to reduce the state’s support of wind energy over the course of the last several legislative sessions. On a political level, this deal largely revolved around the future of Kansas’ 20{f24b02adee2102ff0c5f5079c50862fc8ba5fa53f8615b567037555463da2377} by 2020 Renewable Portfolio Standard, which has been subjected to a number of attacks over the last few legislative sessions.  All of these previous efforts failed, but the political pressure to reduce or repeal the…