Today LevelTen Energy, the leading provider of renewable transaction infrastructure, and Norton Rose Fulbright, a global law firm serving the world’s preeminent corporations and financial institutions committed to energy transition, announced the availability of a template Letter of Intent (LOI) and Term Sheet, a key legal document that establishes the terms of a renewable energy project acquisition. The standard document is now available for all participants in the LevelTen Asset Marketplace, a platform that connects clean energy project developers and financiers, and provides the software, analytics and M&A transaction expertise they need to execute transactions quickly.
Previously, when a seller and a buyer of a renewable energy project entered into negotiations for a project acquisition, one of them would need to prepare a Letter of Intent and Term Sheet from scratch. Not only was the process for preparing the document time-consuming, but the document itself often failed to address key transaction terms. Ultimately, this slowed down the process of preparing acquisition documentation, increased legal costs, and heightened the risk of transaction failure since terms were often negotiated on-the-fly and parties failed to level-set expectations prior to launching detailed due diligence. Now, buyers and sellers of renewable energy projects have a standardized starting point that serves the needs of both parties equally. Rather than creating the entire document from scratch, legal teams can focus on the specific terms that are unique to each project, improving the efficiency of the project acquisition process while serving both parties better.
“We’re thrilled to partner with Norton Rose Fulbright to create standardized documentation that will help accelerate project transactions,” said Patrick Worrall, VP of Asset Marketplace at LevelTen Energy. “The more LevelTen can streamline processes for our industry participants, the faster they can get new green energy onto the grid. It’s small but critical efficiencies like this that will enable the industry to scale more quickly.”
“We have been advising our clients on energy transition transactions for many years now and are always focused on moving the renewable energy industry forward,” said Becky Diffen, a Partner at Norton Rose Fulbright who focuses on renewable energy M&A. “We were pleased to work with LevelTen Energy to develop legal documents that will help set the market standards and allow for more efficient transactions. Every step forward counts.”
A utility-scale wind or solar asset under development can transfer ownership several times, involving lengthy processes each time. In a survey of 33 utility-scale wind, solar and storage developers conducted by LevelTen, nearly 70% of respondents said it takes 6 months or longer to sell a project. LevelTen Energy launched its Asset Marketplace in 2021 to streamline this process, delivering a marketplace, software, analytics and standards, like this template LOI and Term Sheet, that accelerate the process. Since then, more than 175 clean energy project developers have participated in 56 asset processes, including requests for proposals and auctions, with over 40 gigawatts of capacity offered for acquisition.
On June 1 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time, LevelTen Energy and Norton Rose Fulbright will be presenting a webinar to discuss best practices for negotiating the LOI and Term Sheet, and how developers can easily get started with the new template: register here.
