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New York law firm appoints another energy practice partner in Houston

mover & shaker

Dale Smith, an energy finance and transactions attorney, has joined Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP. Photo via Willkie.com

A law firm again expanded its Houston-based, energy-focused team.

Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP announced that energy finance and transactions attorney Dale Smith has joined the firm as a partner in the Corporate & Financial Services Department, which will be based in the Houston office. Willkie provides legal solutions to businesses that address critical issues that affect multiple industries and markets with 13 offices worldwide.

Smith was most recently a partner at Mayer Brown, and prior to law, he worked in the electric and gas utility industry as an analyst for Entergy. He currently serves on the Institute for Energy Law Advisory Board. He will manage energy clients in a broad range of transactions from upstream, midstream, and downstream oil and gas, renewable energy, power and energy finance deals.

“Dale’s addition further expands the energy transactional platform we’ve been building in Texas and across the country with our several partner additions this past year,” Archie Fallon, managing partner of the Houston office, says in a news release.

Smith will advise both lenders and borrowers in secured and unsecured credit transactions, which includes asset-based financings, acquisition and project financings, syndicated and structured financings (including tax equity), DIP and bankruptcy exit financings, and borrowing base facilities, letter of credit facilities, working capital facilities, workouts, and restructurings. Smith will also guide clients on the development and commercialization of hydrogen and ammonia facilities, carbon capture projects, renewable power generation facilities, and hydrocarbon facilities across the value chain. This will include gathering, processing, fractionation, transportation and storage facilities.

“Willkie’s dynamic Texas platform and growing national and international energy capabilities are a great fit for my practice and I’m delighted to be a part of that growth,” Smith said in a news release. “I look forward to working with the talented attorneys here to expand our transactional offerings to best serve the needs of our clients.”

Smith is the seventh lateral partner addition to Willkie’s multi-office energy team in the past year.

Willkie recently also announced Sarah McLean as a partner in the Corporate & Financial Services Department and Private Equity practice at the Houston office. McLean’s practice will focus on private equity transactions. Mostly the transactions will be acting for sponsors in making portfolio investments,exiting their investments, and growing their platform companies. McLean was a joint head of the US Energy industry group at Shearman & Sterling prior to Willkie Farr & Gallagher, and her experience in the energy sector includes 20 years.

Sarah McLean brings over 20 years of energy industry experience to her new role at Willkie Farr & Gallagher. Photo via Wilkie.com

New York law firm expands energy practice with new partner appointment

new hire

Willkie Farr & Gallagher has announced that Sarah McLean has joined the firm’s Houston office as a partner. It's the sixth energy industry group hire in the past year.

McLean’s practice will focus on private equity transactions. Mostly the transactions will be acting for sponsors in making portfolio investments, exiting their investments, and growing their platform companies.

“Willkie has leading private equity and transactional capabilities, a fast-growing energy platform and a collaborative culture across the Firm," McLean says in a news release. "I’m excited to join the exceptional team here and further strengthen Willkie’s dynamic work across the energy sector to support the growing needs of our clients.”

McLean was a joint head of the US Energy industry group at Shearman & Sterling prior to Willkie Farr & Gallagher, and her experience in the energy sector includes 20 years.

“Sarah is a standout private equity and energy lawyer and we are pleased to welcome her to Willkie,” Chairman Thomas Cerabino says in the release. ”She brings significant dealmaking experience to our global energy team in Texas and across the U.S. and Europe and will be an invaluable resource to our clients navigating the changing energy market.”

Willkie provides legal solutions to businesses that address critical issues that affect multiple industries and markets with 13 offices worldwide.

“Sarah has a stellar reputation as a market-leading lawyer and dealmaker, with deep private equity and M&A experience in the oil and gas and energy transition sectors that will further the growth of our expanding Texas platform,” Archie Fallon, managing partner of the Houston office, says in a news release. “As clients look for new opportunities in the evolving energy sector, Sarah’s substantial track record and experience will complement our capabilities in Texas and across the firm, and we are thrilled to welcome her to Willkie.”

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Houston researchers harness dialysis for new wastewater treatment process

waste not

By employing medical field technology dialysis, researchers at Rice University and the Guangdong University of Technology in China uncovered a new way to treat high-salinity organic wastewater.

In the medical field, dialysis uses a machine called a dialyzer to filter waste and excess fluid from the blood. In a study published in Nature Water, Rice’s team found that mimicking dialysis can separate salts from organic substances with minimal dilution of the wastewater, addressing some of the limitations of previous methods.

The researchers say this has the potential to lower costs, recover valuable resources across a range of industrial sectors and reduce environmental impacts.

“Traditional methods often demand a lot of energy and require repeated dilutions,” Yuanmiaoliang “Selina” Chen, a co-first author and postdoctoral associate in Elimelech’s lab at Rice, said in a news release. “Dialysis eliminates many of these pain points, reducing water consumption and operational overheads.”

Various industries generate high-salinity organic wastewater, including petrochemical, pharmaceutical and textile manufacturing. The wastewater’s high salt and organic content can present challenges for existing treatment processes. Biological and advanced oxidation treatments become less effective with higher salinity levels. Thermal methods are considered “energy intensive” and susceptible to corrosion.

Ultimately, the researchers found that dialysis effectively removed salt from water without requiring large amounts of fresh water. This process allows salts to move into the dialysate stream while keeping most organic compounds in the original solution. Because dialysis relies on diffusion instead of pressure, salts and organics cross the membrane at different speeds, making the separation method more efficient.

“Dialysis was astonishingly effective in separating the salts from the organics in our trials,” Menachem Elimelech, a corresponding author on the study and professor of civil and environmental engineering and chemical and biomolecular engineering at Rice, said in a news release. “It’s an exciting discovery with the potential to redefine how we handle some of our most intractable wastewater challenges.”

Virtual power plant from Houston-area company debuts at CES

Powering Up

Brookshire, Texas-based decentralized energy solution company AISPEX Inc. debuted its virtual power plant (VPP) platform, known as EnerVision, earlier this month at CES in Las Vegas.

EnerVision offers energy efficiency, savings and performance for residential, commercial and industrial users by combining state-of-the-art hardware with an AI-powered cloud platform. The VPP technology enables users to sell excess energy back to the grid during demand peaks.

AISPEX, or Advanced Integrated Systems for Power Exchange, has evolved from an EV charging solutions company into an energy systems innovator since it was founded in 2018. It focuses on integrating solar energy and decentralized systems to overcome grid limitations, reduce upgrade costs and accelerate electrification.

Regarding grid issues, the company hopes by leveraging decentralized solar power and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), EnerVision can help bring energy generation closer to consumption, which can ease grid strain and enhance stability. EnerVision plans to do this by addressing “aging infrastructure, grid congestion, increasing electrification and the need for resilience against extreme weather and cyber threats,” according to the company.

One of the company's latest VPP products is SuperHub, which is an all-in-one charging station designed to combine components like solar panels, energy storage systems, fast EV chargers, mobile EV chargers and LCD display screens, into a unified, efficient solution.

“It supports clean energy generation and storage but also ensures seamless charging for electric vehicles while providing opportunities for communication or advertising through its built-in displays,” says Vivian Nie, a representative from AISPEX.

Also at CES, AISPEX displayed its REP Services, which offer flexible pricing, peak load management, and renewable energy options for end-to-end solutions, and its Integrated Systems, which combine solar power, battery storage, EV charging and LCD displays.

“We had the opportunity to meet new partners, reconnect with so many old friends, and dive into discussions about the future of e-mobility and energy solutions,” CEO Paul Nie said on LinkedIn.

In 2024, AISPEX installed its DC Fast chargers at two California Volkswagen locations.

Houston-based energy transition leader talks new role, shares future predictions

new hire

For some companies, all that’s needed to make a seismic shift toward innovation is to hire the right person to steer the organization in a transcendent direction.

Arcadis, a sustainable design, engineering, and consultancy solutions company, is channeling this concept by hiring Masjood Jafri as its new National Energy Transition Strategic Advisor and Business Development Lead. In the role, Jafri will help lead and develop the company’s energy transition business growth and strategy for its interests in the United States alongside Matthew Yonkin, National Energy Transition Solution Leader, based in New York.

“I have a fairly diverse background, with about a decade in the energy industry with an oil and gas, power and petrochemicals background,” says Jafri, who moved to Houston from the U.K. back in 2012. “But prior to that, I had about a decade in the infrastructure world, looking into the transportation market, and the manufacturing sector, as well as working as a lender's advisor in the capital market. So, in this very transformative period, you need to connect all the dots.”

With just over six months in his new role, Jafri leverages his 20 years of experience in leading the successful delivery of capital programs and projects as the strategic advisor to Arcadis’ own capital projects.

“Arcadis is on a journey to be the sustainability partner or sustainable transformation partner for our clients,” Jafri says. “And the path to sustainability goes through energy transition. Arcadis has been investing quite heavily in that space for us to be a leading consulting services provider for energy companies.

Jafri’s hire comes as Arcadis moves its business operations in Houston to a new centralized office in the Galleria area. According to Jafri, this will bring the company’s expertise under one roof. With Houston being the energy capital of the world, Jafri says Arcadis is positioned to lead and deliver results for the energy demand in the United States and globally.

“Houston is the Silicon Valley of energy,” Jafri says. “The challenge is to continue to drive with that force. … We have the talent in the city, we have the right mindset—very entrepreneurial, and obviously a lot of capital commitment to make these changes.

“And it is not just coming from the private sector, it is also coming from the public sector. So, I think the stars are aligning in the context of what is needed for us to have a planet-positive future and Houston being suitably positioned to deliver to that,” he adds.

And while keeping up with the demand for energy and moving towards clean energy are equally important challenges, Jafri is more focused on addressing the latter.

“Clean energy is certainly a bigger challenge because it requires a very broad area of energy sources to come together and to make it cleaner,” Jafri says. “Technologically, some of those things are not ready yet, at least to be scalable in a commercial and profitable way. So that's the challenge. I think it is a clean energy challenge, but obviously, the demand side makes it a bit more complicated.”

Texans, and more specifically Houstonians, have seen firsthand the complications of demand and the pitfalls of energy security and resilience. Addressing these issues, along with many other sustainability challenges, will also be part of Jafri’s core mission at Arcadis.

“As we saw in severe climate conditions, the grid is vulnerable and so are the people connected to the grid,” Jafri says. “The better we can make the grid more resilient and more adaptive to these changes, the more satisfactory conditions will be on the ground for people who are affected.”

Jafri asserts that the industry is already considering numerous options, including all colors of hydrogen, solar, wind and geothermal, in addition to fossil-based energy (natural gas). These measures are already in progress, but consumers are concerned with climate change and, of course, the impact on their electricity bills. Still, states like California, Washington and Texas are making progress.

“I would say by the year 2030 you would start to see a pretty significant movement in the right direction,” Jafri says. “If you look from a federal policy perspective, we want to produce 100 percent of the electricity clean by 2035. That is an expected goal, but it’s all happening.”

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