John Smolen is a member of Nossaman's Infrastructure Practice Group. He counsels on a variety of transactional issues, focusing on project development, construction, and finance transactions, historically in the renewable energy and advanced or emerging technologies spaces. John has represented renewable energy project developers, investors, industrial plant owners, and electricity-generating companies. John also has experience counseling clients in general corporate and finance matters, joint development transactions, mergers and acquisitions, asset/equipment supply transactions, renewable energy credit and retail energy sales transactions, operation and maintenance agreements, and real estate transactions.
John has extensive experience in complex engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) transactions in the wind, waste-to-energy, and proprietary technology commercialization spaces handling client matters through the life-cycle of a project and often interfacing with federal, state and local regulatory matters, intellectual property matters, and securities and financing matters. John also has extensive experience counseling clients and supporting clients' dispute resolution negotiations and proceedings.
While in law school, John served as the editor in chief of the Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy. Prior to attending law school, John served in the U.S. Navy as an officer, a naval aviator, flight instructor, and Naval ROTC instructor at Virginia Tech.
Prior Experience
Project development, construction, and finance practice (several national wind-energy construction projects, solar-energy development project efforts, coal/waste coal-related projects, geothermal project investment and structuring, and waste-to-energy facilities)
Energy asset divestiture, asset purchase, and complex corporate and regulation-heavy diligence analysis and counseling
Public finance (tax-exempt bond financing)
Davis-Bacon Act, diligence disclosure management under FOIA/Privacy Act constraints, ARRA, and other federal government grant/loan matters analysis and counseling