Solar's legal risks are changing. Here's what to watch out for

03/06/23 • 46 min

As the renewable energy industry has grown up, its legal risks have too.

Sure, we as an industry talk all the time about NIMBYism. But what about zoning and permitting litigation? What happens when a project produces stormwater runoff that damages a neighboring property? And how about all of these new incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act... who's on the hook if a project falls short of its obligations?
Episode 38 of the Factor This! podcast features two attorneys working really closely on these issues.
Matthew Karmel is the principal and chair of the Environmental and Sustainability Practice Group at the national law firm Offit Kurman. Yana Spitzer is in-house counsel at ENGIE North America.
Karmel and Spitzer take us inside the courtroom for a look at the legal risk plaguing project developers today, and they point out the potholes to watch out for in the future.
WRISE Speaker Spotlight
This week's WRISE Speaker Spotlight features Patricia Vega, founder and CEO of Quantum New Energy. Patricia's expertise includes asset management, corporate social responsibility, energy efficiency, and more. Contact Patricia for a speaking engagement, view other speakers, or join the Speakers Bureau yourself at WRISEenergy.org.
Factor This! is produced by Renewable Energy World and Clarion Energy. Connect with John Engel, the host of Factor This!, on LinkedIn and Twitter.

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As the renewable energy industry has grown up, its legal risks have too.

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Clean energy's long road to diversity

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The proverbial light bulb that sparked Tasha McCarter's interest in energy was an actual light bulb.
A third grade experiment using a hand crank to produce electricity led to an accomplished career developing power plants for SunPower, Silicon Ranch, and most recently RWE as their vice president of solar engineering.
For McCarter, who is Black, the rise to become one of the energy industry's foremost engineering leaders was anything but easy. While the industry's well-known diversity problem is slowly improving, there's still a long way to go.
McCarter joined Episode 37 of the Factor This! podcast to talk about her career, Black History Month, and the energy industry's pursuit of a more diverse workforce.

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Data: The energy transition’s next big thing

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While the energy transition is well underway, the power dynamics that have ruled the industry for generations are still largely the same.
Kiran Bhatraju, founder and CEO of Arcadia, is upending that paradigm by taking control of energy data and using it to fuel the rapid deployment of distributed energy assets.
Arcadia manages more community solar subscribers than almost anyone else, and its software platform, Arc, uses data from thousands of utilities to pinpoint where, and when, to build and use DERs.
Still commonly referred to as a startup, Arcadia is now a billion-dollar cleantech unicorn.
Bhatraju joined Episode 38 of the Factor This! podcast to discuss Arcadia's climb and the energy transition's next big thing.
Factor This! is produced by Renewable Energy World and Clarion Energy. Connect with John Engel, the host of Factor This!, on LinkedIn and Twitter.