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Real Estate Energy

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We are one of the few London-headquartered real estate groups to have a dedicated real estate energy team. With a market-leading energy practice, we provide advice from an informed industry perspective. Our client base is diverse. From major energy companies such as National Grid and SSE and landowners such as Scottish Water to a wide range of developers and investors in the renewable sector such as Aviva and Luxcara.

For developers, key issues include ensuring that the relevant sites and all access/easement routes are properly secured before substantial investment is made in the consenting and development process. This includes not only the necessary cable easements, but also the appropriate access rights needed for commissioning, operation and decommissioning of the relevant facility.

From an investor’s point of view, areas of particular concern are ensuring proper compliance with planning conditions and making sure that operational sites have all the relevant rights they need.

In relation to utility companies, a particular focus on the consenting and consultation strategies is needed to ensure that rights are not just secured in isolation and adopt the spirit of the DECC directives, where reasonable efforts to secure rights voluntarily have to be demonstrated to justify the need for compulsory purchase powers.

We are pleased to provide real estate advice to some of the most dynamic players in the energy market including National Grid, Hargreaves, SSE, SGN, Aviva Investors, EON – renewables, Brookfield Global Renewable Energy Advisor, Repsol, EDF, EDF Energy Renewables, Element Power, Wirsol Energy Limited, Renewable Energy Partnerships Limited, Balfour Beatty Infrastructure Fund, Luxcara, Statkraft, Alpha Real Capital LLP, BG Group, ConocoPhillips, Talisman, Statoil, Premier Oil, Enquest and Octopus Investments Limited. Our client base also covers oil and gas majors, landowners, developer-operators and funders.

We are helping clients deliver on flagship projects across the whole spectrum of the energy sector - renewables (including solar, onshore- and offshore-wind), oil and gas, networks, conventional power generation, energy centres (such as Fulham Wharf and Nine Elms), biomass asset protection, third party objection, surplus land re-development and Waste to Energy.

We also regularly act for funders of renewable projects so we are very familiar with what they are looking for in order to be able to finance the project and therefore can pre-empt issues when acting on the acquisition aspects for our clients.

10/11/2023
Driving sustainability in real estate and construction
Contributing to the fight against climate change and creating social value are now priorities for the real estate and construction sectors.   The long-term nature of the built environment means that resilience and sustainability should be considered at every stage if buildings are to be environmentally and socially responsible. This brings both opportunities and challenges for the businesses that create, own or maintain it. They must consider the evolving technical, regulatory and market landscape, to ensure that their investments are future-proofed commercially, as well as environmentally and socially. This section of Bandwidth looks at some of the ESG issues that confront developers and property owners, and how they can incorporate practical solutions into their businesses.
13/12/2023
MEES - are the regulations working?
MEES is a flagship policy to help the UK meet its net zero targets. MEES returns over 50million hits on Google, so it is undoubtedly a widely discussed piece of legislation that should play a major role in reducing the carbon footprint of the non-domestic property stock in the UK. But is there sufficient bite to these regulations? 
Law-Now: Real Estate
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20/02/2024
MEES - why are local authorities failing to enforce?
The UK government has a continued drive and commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Yet as highlighted in the first of this series of publications, “MEES – are the regulations working?” the risk of MEES enforcement is low. Against a hotly discussed political backdrop, why is it that local authorities are continually failing to enforce the MEES regulations? Left alone, the existing approach serves to undermine the UK’s net zero strategy.
13/12/2023
Innovation, regulation and investment needed for sustainable transport...
The CMS Urbanisation and Transport Roundtable, held during COP28, brought together a host of infrastructure businesses to reflect on the commitments and agreements that have been made.
01/11/2023
COP28
CMS contributed to the conversations at, and around, COP28 by hosting a series of events to collaborate, debate and look forward. Here, our experts publish soundbites and commentary to share their perspectives on the impacts of the announcements and agreements. 
28/06/2023
Tomorrow
Taking the long view Even in challenging times, real estate investors continue to have a strong degree of confidence in the future of the sector.
14/06/2023
London
The majority of UK real estate professionals continue to believe that London is overvalued. As our chart shows, this is very much business as usual. Over the past eight years, only 2021 - when investors began to wonder what a post-covid market might look like - has challenged the status quo. Even then, what we saw was only a significant narrowing of the gap, not a reversal. In this year’s polling, 62% of our respondents feel London is overvalued, as opposed to 6% who believe it is undervalued. These are the most bearish numbers we have seen since pre‑Brexit days.
14/06/2023
Infographic
  
14/06/2023
Sustainable offices and EPC requirements
Investors may be moving towards the view that making offices sustainable does not necessarily equate to higher costs for occupiers.
14/06/2023
The view from the UK
Every year we ask a cross-section of leading UK real estate professionals for their views on the market. This year we polled 270 experts, including 62 investors and 54 developers. In many ways they share the outlook of the global investors we surveyed, with long-term confidence tempered by short-term concerns. Overall, 38% reported feeling optimistic about the market, while 34% describe themselves as neutral and 28% are pessimistic. Although positive, this take on the market is unsurprisingly more cautious than the one we found 12 months ago, with sentiment falling back to levels last seen at the beginning of the pandemic as the more bullish outlook of the past two years recedes.
14/06/2023
Global cities
As our chart shows, the genuinely ‘global’ cities remain the most appealing (albeit by slim margins), with the top four slots going to London, Paris, Tokyo and New York.
14/06/2023
The big picture
Despite a difficult year and an uncertain outlook, we found strong underlying positives among investors globally.
06/06/2023
Other UK cities
Looking at the rest of the UK, Manchester still remains on top of our ranking of regional cities, popular with 58% of UK professionals.
06/06/2023
Asset classes
Given the strong demand/supply imbalance, it is no surprise to see ‘living’ asset classes take the top spots when professionals are asked which sectors they favour.