Last month, Husch Blackwell published its seventh-annual report on public-private partnerships (P3s) and alternative project delivery strategies. This year’s report features an interesting article by Michael Blackwell, an attorney on the firm’s Energy & Natural Resources team, that explores how P3s and P3-like agreements might be deployed to hasten the transition from fossil fuels to a more sustainable fuel mix, particularly regarding electric vehicles and the infrastructure needed to support their operation.
His article, “The Role of Public-Private Partnerships in U.S. Transportation Electrification,” notes the opportunities for—as well as the difficulties in—establishing the conditions in which P3s can thrive. Blackwell notes that P3s have been absent generally from the projects associated with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act or the Inflation Reduction Act and that wooing more private investment into these projects requires more regulatory and financial certainty. He notes that it will be difficult to attract private business when “details vital to the underlying economics of P3s or P3-like agreements remain unsettled.”