Covington’s Carbon Markets & Climate Change Practice focuses on the business challenges and opportunities created by emerging climate change regimes (i.e., legal instruments aimed at countering the effects of increased concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHG’s) in the Earth’s atmosphere). In a carbon-constrained world, companies that are first movers in adopting cleaner energy technologies, or that can claim credit for reducing emissions of GHG’s in their respective countries, will have a competitive edge. A new asset class, in the form of GHG emission credits, is being traded in domestic as well as global markets. Regulatory structures are being developed, with varying degrees of coordination at the local, state, federal and international levels, that will affect a great variety of industries: imposing burdens on some, and creating opportunities for others. Covington assists clients in evaluating, managing and planning for these diverse effects of climate change initiatives.
Our practice is led by Stuart Eizenstat (who, as Under Secretary of State, was the lead United States negotiator of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol) and Rubén Kraiem (a corporate and transactional lawyer with experience in emerging markets and more than a decade of involvement in the environmental community). It draws on experts in our energy, environmental, transactional, intellectual property, securities, trade and legislative practices. It covers the European Union, where an emissions trading scheme is already in effect, the United States, where regional and state initiatives are underway and federal policies are being developed, and Canada. Our practice focuses as well on Latin America and parts of Asia where, as the Clean Development Mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol is put into effect, a range of transactional opportunities will arise.
Representative Matters
- Advocacy assistance on issues related to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, and lobbying on behalf of clients with respect to climate change legislation in the United States, in the various states of the United States and in the European Union.
- Legal due diligence, project finance advice and assistance in connection with the approval and certification of projects to qualify for the creation of tradable credits under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism.
- Advice to companies on offsetting or managing their financial and other exposure to carbon constraints.
- Advice to companies on disclosure policies and other internal accounting and reporting procedures to measure, manage and address climate change risks.
- Representing clean technology companies, as well as financial intermediaries, in efforts to raise capital specifically leveraging a climate change risk advantage.
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