Practice Description

Mr. Weissman is a partner of Carter Ledyard & Milburn LLP and Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Energy Business Watch, a well-respected and widely followed energy market analysis service. During the course of his 30-year plus career, Mr. Weissman has played a key role in helping to transform energy and environmental policy at the state and federal level and to develop innovative new structures for major energy transactions. He is well known nationally for his ability to solve complex business, legal and regulatory problems by successfully devising unique “out of the box” solutions.

As an attorney and energy market analyst, Mr. Weissman has provided strategic advice and counseling to more than fifty major power producers, financial players, major electric and gas utilities, independent oil and gas producers, coal producers, energy traders, hedge funds, retail and wholesale energy marketers, equipment vendors and large energy users, typically at the CEO level, advising these clients on many of the highest stakes issues affecting the energy industry.

Mr. Weissman repeatedly has been among the first in the country to spot major developing trends in the natural gas, oil, electricity and coal markets. During the period immediately after enactment of Title IV of the Clean Air Act, Mr. Weissman also pioneered the use of emissions trading in the United States, structuring nearly all of the initial transactions, including the first publicly announced transaction. More recently, he played a key role in path-breaking efforts to substitute use of natural gas-fired generation for more than 1,000 MW of coal in Denver Colorado.

During his career, Mr. Weissman has been instrumental in crafting major state and federal energy regulatory programs, developing high profile federal and state energy and environmental legislation, helping to create new financing mechanisms for large energy projects, expanding access to the transmission grid, increasing competition in wholesale and retail electricity markets and ensuring rate recovery for major capital expenditures for environmental compliance.

In addition, Mr. Weissman has been lead attorney in major multi-year litigation efforts involving hundreds of millions of dollars in claims, briefed major cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals, directed two of the most intensive investigations ever undertaken regarding management practices at nuclear plants (involving the Seabrook Nuclear Plant in New Hampshire and the Pilgrim Nuclear Plant in Massachusetts) and been the lead attorney in numerous high profile regulatory proceeding before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and state public utility commissions. He also has appeared as an expert witness in regulatory commission proceedings and high stakes commercial litigation.