Provided land use and entitlement counsel, including successfully streamlining the CEQA process, for a 100-megawatt, 400-megawatt hour battery energy storage system on a brownfield site in unincorporated Ventura County, California. The landmark energy storage project includes a Tesla Megapack battery system and will provide local, on-demand energy storage capacity to help Southern California’s transition away from a coastal natural gas powered power plant while increasing reliability and capacity to integrate the growing proportion of renewable sources of electricity generation on the grid.

Serves as water rights counsel for a global solar power company in securing water supplies for the location of its projects in the Southwest

Represent solar developer in all water, land use and environmental review related matters for its development of a major solar power and battery storage project.

Utility-Scale Solar, San Diego County. Provided land use, permitting and CEQA/NEPA counsel for 168 MW solar project in San Diego County, which included both program- and project-level analysis for multiple projects. Utilized AB 900 litigation streamlining to compress litigation brought by highly litigious community group down to 10 months and successfully defended permits in San Diego Superior Court.

Served as Nevada water rights counsel to Quantum Utility Generation, LLC in connection with its purchase of general partnerships that together own an approximately 85-megawatt cogeneration facility located in Clark County, Nevada.

Successfully defended Major Use Permits for solar technology company and resolved pending CEQA litigation filed against the client, the County of San Diego, and other real parties in interest.

Counsel to a renewable energy company and its subsidiaries on corporate and contract issues regarding three wind farms in Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota. Our work included negotiating and drafting joint venture structure and equity financing documents. We also assisted the companies with negotiating and drafting master supply agreements, and operations, maintenance and supply agreements with vendors and contractors, and assisted with analysis and negotiations concerning the availability of Section 1603 cash grants for its properties.

Outside general counsel to a Nevada Indian tribe in a number of large scale development projects, including the development of a 200 MW concentrated solar project in southern Nevada. Work includes the negotiation of lease and other agreements with a large renewable energy developer, development of water rights for the project, negotiation with the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and other federal agencies and guiding the tribe through the NEPA process. Legal work also included the development of a sales and use tax regulatory structure for the tribe.

Provided strategic counsel to Bion Environmental Technologies, Inc. in establishing federal-level guidance for a nutrient trading program and in evaluating the possibility of a cellulosic-styled tax credit that would apply to Bion's process for producing cellulose-based renewable energy. Brownstein facilitated meetings with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), key members of Congress and other strategic government officials to discuss the issue of basin-wide nutrient trading and energy production from Bion's integrated facilities.

Represented a Colorado solar company in successfully negotiating and installing a large solar project in an army base in Afghanistan.

Provided land use and CEQA compliance advice to the first wind project in Santa Barbara County.