William Tarantino

Partner
Morrison Foerster

MOFO-VA

Bill counsels the firm’s domestic and international energy, infrastructure, and technology clients on the environmental and regulatory requirements associated with project finance and other corporate transactions.  He has nearly two decades of experience coordinating environmental due diligence assessments, advising clients on deal-related liability and risk allocation, and pursuing post-closing resolution of environmental and other regulatory challenges. 

Bill frequently advises on project financing of electricity generation facilities and major infrastructure projects. He has represented project sponsors, lenders and investors in connection with all aspects of solar, waste-to-energy and other energy storage technologies.  He possesses deep subject matter expertise on the sourcing and regulatory requirements for large and small battery installations, and has counseled major battery suppliers on the domestic and international legal challenges facing new battery technologies and battery storage projects.   In the renewables context, he provides advice on land use, permitting, federal and state environmental review, endangered species and other environmental regulatory aspects of site development of greenfield sites. He also has deep expertise in the recycling and reuse of contaminated property.

Recently, Bill served as lead environmental counsel to Maxus Energy Corporation and four affiliated debtors in their chapter 11 cases, which addressed over $12 billion in claims, predominantly in connection with environmental liability relating to the country’s largest superfund site—the Passaic River and related bodies of water.

For the past eight years, San Francisco Magazine has recognized Mr. Tarantino in its “Super Lawyers” list for his work in environmental and consumer law. In 2014, he was chosen as the exclusive winner of the Client Choice Award for Environmental Law in California and as a national “Rising Star” in Environmental Law by Law360. 

Mr. Tarantino received his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center with honors, and completed the Law and Public Health program sponsored by Georgetown University and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Through this program, he earned a master’s in public health, where he gained expertise in environmental health risk assessment from the Johns Hopkins Risk Sciences and Public Policy Institute. At Georgetown, he was an executive editor of the Georgetown International Environmental Law Journal and received the CALI Award for Excellence in International Environmental Law. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley.