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Currents

Norton Rose Fulbrightwww.projectfinance.law
Currents is a podcast published by Norton Rose Fulbright that features in-depth discussions on the latest developments in project finance. The podcast is hosted by partner Todd Alexander, who interviews key business leaders and policy makers to investigate important trends affecting the energy and infrastructure space.
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Episodes

Ep79: PTC Extension Legislation Update

Keith Martin, with Norton Rose Fulbright, joins us from Washington to discuss the likelihood that Congress will pass a tax extenders bill at year end and what tax changes of interest to the renewable energy industry are potentially in play.

Dec 06, 201912 min

Ep78: Financing Renewable Energy: Present & Future

Live from the Wharton Energy Conference, Manish Kumar, managing director at The AES Corporation, Jackson Lehr, operating partner, infrastructure at Energy Impact Partners, Martin Torres, managing director at BlackRock and Peter Zhu, senior vice president at Macquarie Capital, sit down with Todd Alexander to cover financing renewable energy. The lively panel discusses everything from traditional PPAs and tax equity to the latest trends the panelists are seeing in the industry.

Dec 03, 201950 minEp. 78

Ep77: Solar + Storage: A Look at the Market

Fleming Ray, senior project manager, due diligence at DNV GL, joins us to discuss all things solar plus storage. We get into the federal and state policies surrounding the market, the outlook for the next five years, the core technical due diligence focus areas, the integration of battery testing results including DNV GL’s recently published Battery Scorecard, and more.

Nov 25, 201923 minEp. 77

Ep76: FERC's Proposed Changes to PURPA

Bob Shapiro, partner in Norton Rose Fulbright’s Washington office, discusses FERC’s proposed changes to PURPA. We go over what PURPA is and why it was created, its relevance today, the most significant changes that FERC is proposing and how those changes will affect the market.

Oct 24, 201920 min

Ep75: The Business of Hydro with Hydro-Québec

Serge Abergel, director of media relations at Hydro-Québec, joins us to discuss how being state-owned affects the company's business decisions, how much energy the company exports and where the energy is being exported. We get into the business of hydro, its environmental impacts, the challenges of exporting to the northeastern US and more.

Oct 07, 201921 min

Ep74: Radiant REIT: Solar Market Disruptor

Jim Spano, co-founder of Radiant REIT, joins us to discuss the evolution of the solar market and the idea behind his new company. Radiant REIT has an interesting business model for providing long term fixed-rate debt to solar projects.

Sep 30, 201928 minEp. 74

Ep73: Superpower: One Man's Quest to Transform US Energy

Russell Gold, senior energy reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and Michael Skelly, a senior advisor at Lazard and founder of Clean Line Energy Partners, join us for a discussion about Gold’s new book on the ultimately frustrated effort by Clean Line Energy Partners to build four independently-owned transmission lines to move wind electricity from the Midwest to other parts of the country.

Sep 11, 201946 min

Ep72: The ITC Extension Bill

Jessie Robbins, senior director of structured finance at Sol Systems, joins us to talk about the ITC extension bill. We talk about whether developers still need to worry about safe harboring, how the ITC step down works, whether safe harboring is worth it, how module prices are affecting developers' decisions and more.

Sep 04, 201916 minEp. 72

Ep71: BloombergNEF's New Energy Outlook

Ethan Zindler, head of Americas at BloombergNEF, joins us to discuss their New Energy Outlook. We get into how the outlook differs from others in the market, some of the biggest and most surprising findings, the big shifts that are being seen in the US power sector, how costs of wind and solar are changing, and much more.

Aug 21, 201927 minEp. 71

Ep70: Solar Refinancing and M&A

Richard Matsui, founder and CEO of kWh Analytics, is back to give us an update on their Solar Lendscape from the asset owners’ perspective. We get into their methodology, discuss the recent trend of refinancing and how refinancing is being built into models, strategic partnerships in the industry and more.

Aug 12, 201914 minEp. 70

Ep69: The Re-entrance of US ExIm Bank

John Schuster, founder and president of JLS Capital Strategies, LLC and former vice president and head of the structured finance division of US ExIm Bank, joins us to discuss US ExIm Bank’s re-entrance into the market. We discuss what happened, his prediction for the future of the bank, as well as his thoughts on working with the bank and other development finance institutions to finance overseas.

Jul 29, 201916 minEp. 69

Ep68: The Current State of the California Market

Jan Smutny-Jones, CEO of the Independent Energy Producers Association, joins us to discuss the California market. We discuss the current appetite for new investment in the state, how people are reacting to CCAs and mitigating their risks, how the market looks in the aftermath of the wildfires and more.

Jul 16, 201919 minEp. 68

Ep67: The M&A Landscape for Renewables

Ted Brandt, CEO and founder of Marathon Capital, joins us again to discuss his overall perspective on how active the M&A market is for renewables right now and what he sees in the next six months. We discuss the shift in clients on the buy side, the market’s reaction to the influx of new products, how people are currently looking at the California market and more.

Jul 08, 201917 minEp. 67

Ep66: Tax Market Update

David Burton, partner in our New York office, joins us to for an update on recent headlines in the tax market. We discuss the recent opinions of the US Court of Federal Claims in Bishop Hill Energy, LLC and California Ridge Wind Energy, LLC; what is driving the recent increase in repowerings from a tax perspective; and finally safe harboring panels: why people are doing it, how they are structuring their deals and more.

Jul 01, 201918 minEp. 66

Ep65: The Solar Market: Today and Tomorrow

Tom Buttgenbach, CEO and president of 8minute Solar Energy, one of the most successful developers of utility-scale solar projects in the United States, joins us to discuss what he sees in store for the solar market. We get into how solar technology has affected the energy industry, Tom's forecast for the solar market and more.

Jun 25, 201924 minEp. 65

Ep64: Thermal Power Hedging

Noam Berk of Dean Street Capital Advisors joins us to discuss interesting developments in thermal power hedging as well as key hedge products. We get into the details of tolls, HRCOs, RPOs, spark spread swaps, gas netbacks and more.

Jun 03, 201931 minEp. 64

Ep63: The Business of Repowering

Ali Ghorashi, head of section, wind independent engineering at DNV GL, joins us to unpack the business of repowering, which has become relevant in the past few years. We discuss the key valuation drivers, the technological challenges, how the financing structure differs from a preconstruction project and more.

May 28, 201922 minEp. 63

Ep62: North American Development Bank

Alex Hinojosa, Calixto Mateos, Carlos Carranza, and Salvador Lopez of the North American Development Bank, join us to talk about why the bank was formed, the types of projects it finances, how it is governed and more.

May 23, 201932 minEp. 62

Ep61: Solar Risk Assessment Report

Richard Matsui, CEO and co-founder of kWh Analytics, and Dana Olson, solar segment leader at DNV GL, join us to discuss the recently published "Solar Risk Assessment" report in which they, along with industry experts from eight other companies, share their quantitative insights on solar production risk.

May 13, 201933 minEp. 61

Ep59: Quasi-merchant Gas Deals with Investec

Ralph Cho and Mike Pantelogianis, Power & Infrastructure Finance Co-heads for Investec in North America, join us to discuss quasi-merchant gas deals. They go into how the projects are set up, who takes the merchant exposure, different types of hedges available and more. .

Apr 23, 201931 minEp. 59

Ep58: Energy Storage PPAs

Kat Gamache, senior counsel at Norton Rose Fulbright, joins us to discuss all things energy PPAs. We go into the biggest differences between traditional renewable PPAs and PPAs with storage, how pricing is handled, the types of batteries she is seeing in the market, lifespan terms in combined resource projects and more.

Apr 16, 201921 minEp. 58

Ep57: BayWa's Innovative PPA Approach and Market Overview

Jared Quient, Executive Vice President and General Counsel at BayWa r.e., joins us to discuss the innovative PPA structure the company recently used to finance its 100 MW solar deal in North Carolina, from there we expand the discussion to the environment for solar development in the US.

Mar 26, 201925 minEp. 57

Ep60: DOE’s Solar Energy Technologies Office

Dr. Becca Jones-Albertus, deputy director of the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office, joins us to talk about what the office does and the programs it has funded in the past. The office recently announced $130 million of new funding, $3 million of which has been allocated for “Innovative Solar Finance”; she gets into how you can submit a project for funding, how the solar office tracks the success of its projects and more.

Mar 18, 201927 min

Ep55: kWh Analytics' Solar Lendscape

Richard Matsui, CEO and co-founder of kWh Analytics, joins us again to share the company's popular Solar Lendscape and discuss the current solar market. He goes into why the company created the Lendscape, what is currently going on in debt markets for solar projects, how new lenders are getting into the market, how deals with progressively shorter PPAs are being financed, lenders' comfort levels with merchant risk and more.

Mar 12, 201917 minEp. 55

Ep54: The US LNG Industry

John Mauel, partner in our Houston office, joins us to discuss the current US LNG market. We take the discussion from an overview of the global LNG industry to where the US market fits into the global transformation. John shares his experiences in the rapidly evolving market and his predictions for the future.

Mar 05, 201927 minEp. 54

Ep53: Practical Wisdom About Tax Equity

John Eber, former CEO of JPM Capital Corporation, joins us for a conversation about lessons learned over a 30-year career working as a prominent tax equity investor.

Feb 25, 201959 min

Ep52: DNV GL's Energy Transition Outlook

Marion Hill, business line director, renewable energy for North America of DNV GL, joins us to discuss the company's "2018 Energy Transition Outlook." We talk about the model on which the outlook is based and how the DNV GL outlook differs from other energy outlooks, when DNV GL thinks the world will hit peak energy demand and why it thinks demand in North America has already peaked.

Feb 18, 201917 min

Ep51: Working with the NY Green Bank

Alfred Griffin, president of the NY Green Bank, joins us to discuss its mission, what types of deals it is authorized to do and the benefits of borrowing from it. We get into where opportunity currently lies for entrepreneurs, what kind of pricing is offered and more.

Feb 11, 201930 min

Ep50: Covariance Risk with RESurety

Listen in as Lee Taylor, CEO of REsurety, joins Todd Alexander and Rob Eberhardt to give us a refresher course on covariance risk. Lee answers everything from what it is and why you should care about it to who wears the risk in a project and what commercial and industrial buyers can do about when facing it.

Feb 04, 201933 min

Ep49: Grid Strategies on Electricity Market Design

Rob Gramlich, CEO of Grid Strategies, joins us to discuss a recent report on reforms needed in the PJM and MISO electricity markets for renewable energy to become competitive. He explains how different technologies can improve the reliability of wind and solar output, the changes needed in the market for a high-penetration renewable energy scenario, how transmission fits in and more.

Jan 28, 201932 min
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