CLIMATE CHANGE AND SUSTAINABILITY INITIATIVE

Spencer Fane’s Climate Change and Sustainability Initiative (CCSI) helps our clients solve these business quandaries. The attorneys on the CCSI team specialize in many legal fields – construction and real estate, corporate organization and transactions, intellectual property, banking, taxation and environmental. Our goal? Providing our clients with counseling and representation on cutting-edge issues in this rapidly changing world so that those clients can concentrate on their business operations and serving their own customers and clients.

Spencer Fane helps clients succeed with a variety of transactions, lawsuits, deals and other projects falling under the climate change and sustainability umbrella.

For example, we are:

• advising clients on ethanol plant construction and operation deals, including renewable energy production tax credits;


• helping landfills evaluate potential methane gas mining for energy use and increased production and sale of recycled/reclaimed construction materials;


• assisting clients with wind farm siting and permitting;


• advising solid waste companies and other businesses in reclaiming and managing recyclable construction and industrial materials;


• performing the real estate and construction legal work needed to obtain LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification for new and remodeled "green"buildings and industrial plants;


• representing a Midwestern electric utility company in its successful efforts to permit, build, and eventually operate a new coal-fired power plant -- the settlement we negotiated between the utility and environmental interest groups secured the environmental interest groups’ full support of the utility’s carbon-offset, wind power, and energy conservation measures;


• providing intellectual property, patent and trademark advice to numerous "green" product manufacturers and service companies, including an international waterless cleaning business, and assisting other manufacturers and companies as they "green" their businesses;


• tracking the variety of carbon tax, cap and trade, and greenhouse gas emission controls enacted, adopted, or proposed by international, federal, regional, state and local governments and entities, and the likely fate of those initiatives in the courts;


• assisting a large oil refinery with sustainable redevelopment and reuse of contaminated
  properties; and


• assisting public entities and numerous businesses with the purchases, sale, and redevelopment of contaminated properties.

Spencer Fane’s climate change and sustainability work covers a wide variety of legal fields and disciplines, including:

Climate Change	Sustainability
Litigation Regulatory Tort / Insurance Regulatory Issues Carbon Sequestration Permitting Carbon Trading / Markets / Cap-and-Trade Policy Advocacy Midwest Greenhouse Gas Accord Carbon Capture Rulemaking Climate Risk Disclosure SEC Filings M&A Due Diligence Carbon Footprints	Brownfields Redevelopment Green Advertising / Marketing Green Claims Carbon Offsets / RECS Green Buildings / LEED Construction & Design Financing / Public Funding Energy Bill of 2007 Sustainable Property Redevelopment Contaminated Properties Urban Infill Public / Private Redevelopment Partnerships Renewable Energy Wind Projects Nuclear Ethanol / Biofuels NEPA / ESA / Wetlands

Finally, Spencer Fane practices what we preach. Spencer Fane is a founding member of the Kansas City Climate Protection Partnership, which requires members to: (1) evaluate the company's impact on climate change; (2) reduce greenhouse gas emissions; (3) collaborate with others in the Partnership; and (4) help grow and strengthen the climate protection partnership. All four of our offices are converting to 30% post-consumer office paper whenever possible, recycling office paper and encouraging "electronic-only" circulation of internal memos, reducing the use of disposable cups, plates and cutlery and switching to sustainable products when necessary, recycling beverage cans and bottles, purchasing Energy Star^® or energy-conserving equipment when replacing computers, printers and other office electronics, working with our building management firms to encourage waste recycling, and managing our own electrical equipment, lighting and heating/cooling demands to conserve energy.

Why choose Spencer Fane to represent you with a climate change or sustainability project? Because our 130-plus attorneys are some of the best lawyers practicing in their respective fields. We take great pride in the personal service we give our clients and we have the commitment, depth of experience, and expertise to successfully represent our clients in even the most intricate transaction, project or lawsuit. Choosing Spencer Fane means you get the personal attention of individual lawyers backed by the expertise and resources of a large firm.

For information about our climate change and sustainability initiative, please contact: