Climate Change

Contacts:
Dennis Arfmann, Denver
Christopher Norton, London
Mary Anne Sullivan, Washington D.C.

A successful climate change strategy requires a thorough understanding of the regulatory environment as well as your company's environmental impact. Our climate change lawyers bring you these insights, which we apply to issues across industries, geographies, and legal areas. Our creative approach can help you mitigate governmental burdens while positioning you to leverage opportunities created by the regulations, such as the development of environmentally friendly products and services. The impact of our work has earned us high rankings from Chambers & Partners, which notes that our climate change team can handle "the full spectrum of climate change matters" and are "well versed in the regulations."

Our interdisciplinary team views climate change through an industry-specific lens. Lawyers who regularly advise clients in your industry, many of whom have worked in-house for companies or regulatory agencies, bring focused insights to the questions you raise. Thus, clients in the energy, automobile, aviation, shipping, food, chemical, retail, manufacturing, construction, insurance, and financial industries who are adding climate change to their list of critical business considerations can work with lawyers who know their businesses and understand what climate change regulation can mean for them.

We advise clients on all major climate change regulatory regimes, including voluntary programs and emerging proposals for state, regional, national, and international mandates. We are increasingly assisting clients in navigating the intersections and conflicts between the various regulatory regimes and their business strategies in the face of the regulatory uncertainty.

Our legal advice on climate change is tailored to the prevailing business environment of the client's particular industry.

• General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Energy, who, among other responsibilities, negotiated the first voluntary agreements for greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions with U.S. electric utilities
• Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Lands and Minerals Management and author of legislation to accelerate development of renewable energy on federal lands 
• Associate Director of the EPA's Office of Sustainable Ecosystems and Communities, Office of Policy Planning and Evaluation, and former Special Assistant to the EPA's Deputy Administrator
• Staff Director and Chief Counsel to Congressman John Dingell, then ranking Democrat of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee
• California Secretary for Resources, responsible for the 13 different agencies with responsibility for the state's natural resources and for integrating economic and environmental goals
• Undersecretary of Transportation for Policy, who, among other responsibilities, served as President and Chair of the 2007 Assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), leading the efforts of the group to address the climate change implications of international aviation

• Long-time member of EPA's Clean Air Act Advisory Committee and active member of the subcommittee on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS)
• Member of EPA's Clean Coal Task Force, working on CCS permitting and liability issues
• Member, Colorado Climate Change Advisory Committee
• Vice-Chair of the Energy Bar Association Climate Change Committee
• Member of the International Chamber of Commerce's Task Force on Climate Change
• Current Chair of the Colorado Regional Air Quality Council (RAQC)