Businesses seeking to succeed in a carbon-constrained world face significant and complex challenges. Global, national and local actions to address climate change and the economy-wide impact of those actions require precisely the type of multidisciplinary approach that has long been Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP’s trademark.

Our climate change practice is led by senior lawyers with broad experience in government, business and law, and is comprised of partners and specialists in our domestic and international policy, investment funds, tax policy, trade, litigation, private equity, global transactions, energy and environmental, and intellectual property practices. The practice involves our offices in London, Beijing, and Moscow and throughout the United States. It builds on our significant experience and relationships with all three branches of the U.S. government, as well as with multilateral environmental agreements and United Nations institutions, the World Bank and other key international organizations and processes.

Akin Gump produces the industry-leading blog ClimateIntel.com, providing daily analysis of domestic and international regulatory, policy and litigation developments that drive investment in climate change technologies, industrial sectors and markets.

Our Approach

Akin Gump's multidisciplinary practice develops unique legal and strategic advice for our clients, whether shaping law and policy, managing risk, maintaining compliance or realizing business opportunity. We bring to our clients’ issues a pragmatic, business-oriented perspective developed through representing public and private sector clients in the United States and abroad and informed by their varied experience in business, government, public interest and politics.

Our climate change lawyers are renowned for resolving issues that seem intractable. The legal obstacles that confront businesses adapting to these changes must be overcome on several fronts simultaneously, accounting for shifting political, economic, regulatory and social landscapes. Coordinating these efforts—maintaining consistency and focus while adapting quickly to changing circumstances—is among the greatest challenges facing our clients. We succeed for our clients by leveraging our breadth of knowledge and insight to create comprehensive, not merely legal, solutions.

Our Services

• Domestic Policy. Tracking law and policy developments, framing issues and advocating on behalf of clients before the Congress, executive agencies and offices, and the states. Our relationships and knowledge of the processes involved in U.S. policymaking are deep, specific and direct, and cover the full spectrum of political leadership in the U.S. government on issues including cap and trade, renewable energy standards, low carbon fuels, carbon capture and storage, clean technologies and tax policy and other incentive programs.
• International Policy. Tracking law and policy developments and advocating on behalf of clients before United Nations organizations, multilateral environmental treaty secretariats, the World Bank, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and other international forums.
• International Trade. Applying unmatched experience and knowledge with the World Trade Organization (WTO) and related U.S. and multilateral institutions, trade regulations, clean technology transfer and financing mechanisms, including a full range of intellectual property protection and enforcement services.
• Litigation. Providing litigation counsel to clients affected by greenhouse gas and climate change-related lawsuits involving issues such as environmental impact statements, nuisance/torts, permitting, corporate disclosure and administrative rulemaking.
• Energy and Environmental. Providing environmental counseling services, including compliance and mitigations strategies, permitting, carbon emissions trading and offsets, and certification, monitoring, and verification of emission reduction strategies.
• Investment Funds and Private Equity. Representing purchasers and originators of project-based greenhouse gas emissions credits, as well as brokers, traders, investment banks, hedge funds, compliance purchasers and others making investments and managing risk related to energy, clean technologies and tradable environmental attributes.
• Global Transactions. Advising clients through the entire project development process, from concept to ribbon-cutting, including creating opportunities to monetize carbon assets and offset carbon footprints. Our professionals possess particular knowledge and experience in the energy and transportation sectors, which have high exposure in a carbon-constrained economy.

Representative Matters

• representing a major power company, in Kivalina v. Exxon Mobil Corp., et al, sued by the native village of Kivalina in Alaska for allegedly causing property damage from the emission of greenhouse gases
• obtaining funding for clean technology research, development and construction under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and similar governmental initiatives
• representing a carbon offset project developer to improve and enhance the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) by strengthening the administrative procedures governing the CDM Executive Board and other market stakeholders
• building a coalition of U.S.-based clean technology providers to break down tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade, including intellectual property right protections, for the development and deployment of technologies in developing companies
• working with alternative energy developers, biofuel manufacturers and other low-carbon fuel vendors with tax policy and incentive programs
• advocating for cap-and-trade solutions to greenhouse gas emissions on behalf of a coalition of business and non-governmental organizations
• working with a coalition of governments to strengthen environmental and administrative integrity of international and domestic climate change laws, including compliance mechanisms such as monitoring, reporting, and verification
• providing litigation and regulatory intelligence on climate change to financial institutions
• working with the oil and gas industry in connection with an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rulemaking and congressional investigation related to carbon capture and storage through underground injection
• defending a big box retailer in lawsuits challenging development for failure to assess greenhouse gas emissions impacts of project
• reviewing and drafting emission reduction purchase agreements.