Always on, always ahead

McDermott has worked closely with Doral to meet all of these challenges.

Doral initially approached McDermott for assistance with a single PPA. Then, as Mammoth scaled across four phases, Doral needed a partner capable of coordinating a variety of interconnected legal decisions in real time.

With deep experience in tax equity, project finance, and large-scale renewable development, McDermott was uniquely positioned to help Doral stay a step ahead throughout this complex, multi-phase undertaking.

Our team’s attention to every aspect of the project – including their ability to think through how PPA negotiations; engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) and supply-chain contracting; tax credit optimization; and financing execution needed to work together – kept the project strategically aligned despite policy and market volatility.

Mammoth North, the project’s first phase, is complete and operational, while the final three phases are nearly completed.

Doral has turned to McDermott for guidance on all aspects of developing and financing the facility. For each of the project’s four phases, our team assisted with PPAs, handled financing, and managed tax equity financing. Doral also engaged McDermott to work on EPC contracts, module supply agreements, services agreements, and credit facilities.

Finding ways to safeguard timelines and keep the project moving, despite unprecedented external challenges and pressures, was key to driving strategic management. As COVID threatened supply chains, we renegotiated essential contracts to avoid delays and ensure financial stability. With multiple stakeholders involved in the project, Doral trusted our team’s negotiating skills and experience to ensure coordination and consistent terms across phases.

Most critically – because a project at any scale will dry up when the dollars stop flowing – our team worked with Doral to secure debt and tax equity financing to the tune of more than $2 billion across multiple phases, which allowed construction to proceed without disruption. Our tax lawyers managed complex structures under an evolving IRA landscape to maintain the all-important tax benefits to investors. Their long track record of working on deals in the energy space, along with their single-minded focus on making things happen to support the client’s business, helped Doral get the project over the finish line.

Underpinning the partnership throughout was McDermott’s commitment to Doral’s goals: providing renewable energy and benefiting the local community and economy.

In addition to employing local construction workers and caterers, and renting housing in the area for other workers, Doral hired local farmers to manage the land under the solar panels, providing them with a stable revenue stream and additional income. Instead of growing crops on that land, the farmers use more than 2,000 pigs, sheep, donkeys, and alpacas to graze the land and manage vegetation beneath the solar panels (a dual-use operation known as agrivoltaics). Supporting this dual-use model required navigating land-use considerations, agricultural leasing dynamics, and long-term operational structures that aligned with lender and investor expectations.