Urban Grid, a Brookfield Renewable company and leading provider of clean energy, has named Randy Sawyer, formerly of EDP Renewables, as General Counsel. In addition, Jeff Hudson, former Director of Transmission Engineering for the firm, has been promoted to Vice President of Asset Management.
“I’ve spent nearly a decade supporting the hard work of decarbonizing the grid and my passion for it transcends the job,” said Sawyer. “Urban Grid is poised for extraordinary growth and the team is really building something new and that’s so exciting. To provide sound counsel and help guide the business through this phase and beyond is a huge and humbling opportunity.”
Sawyer began his career at the law firms of Holland & Knight and Latham & Watkins before joining EDP Renewables, where he spent 10 years, ultimately becoming Associate General Counsel, overseeing finance and tax equity transactions in addition to a broad swath of legal operations and streamlining processes in order to minimize project risk.
As Urban Grid’s first in-house counsel, Sawyer will develop an internal legal function that allows the team to remain nimble and innovative while navigating compliance and regulatory requirements. Further, he will help to establish processes and strategic relationships as the company forms new operating business units such as asset management under VP, Jeff Hudson. Jeff’s asset management experience at Duke Energy coupled with his leadership at Urban Grid make him a great fit to lead the rollout of this new department with the goal of safely operating our power plants, maintaining high reliability and incorporating an agrivoltaic land management program for world-class operations.
“Our late-stage and in-construction projects are rapidly moving towards commercial operations and we’ll be ready to manage power generation by December,” said Peter Candelaria, Urban Grid CEO. “Under Jeff’s leadership, we’re building out operations to fully support our new solar facilities, off-take partners and–importantly–the local community for decades to come. I am honored to welcome Randy and Jeff to the expanding leadership team at Urban Grid.”
In January 2022, Brookfield Renewable U.S. acquired Urban Grid. The acquisition tripled Brookfield Renewable’s U.S. development to 31,000 megawatts of capacity and set Urban Grid on a course for growth. The acquisition has enabled Urban Grid to transition its development assets into operating facilities. Today, the platform spans the lifecycle of solar and energy storage development through project delivery, from site acquisition, community engagement, and development to engineering, construction, and commercialization. Urban Grid is actively preparing for the asset management process as projects enter construction.