Shannon S. Broome

San Francisco

Litigation

Shannon S. Broome is the managing partner of Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP's San Francisco office and a partner in the District of Columbia office. She joined the firm in 2016; she heads its California environmental practice and co-heads its environmental, social and governance practice.

Her work involves the energy industry's response to climate change challenges. As wildfires burned in the summer of 2023, Broome recalled her girlhood in Los Angeles. Climate change wasn't a topic back then, but similar fire fears were real.

"I was a child in the '70s when there was a big fire in the L.A. hills. I remember my mom putting the silver in the trunk of the car and insisting we have the clothes hangers all in the same direction so we could grab, lift and run," she said. "I know that fear as climate change makes fires more frequent and intense. Now, as climate change comes to the fore, I'm at the center of things. It's exciting work. I like permitting a carbon capture project, for example, as I evolve my practice in a direction that wasn't even in the discussion a dozen years ago."

For 20 years, Broome and colleague Charles H. Knauss have served as counsel to the Air Permitting Forum, an association of Fortune 100 petroleum and manufacturing companies that promotes efficient and effective regulations under the Clean Air Act.

"All this is going to be solved by technology," she said of today's climate challenges.

Broome also represents HIF USA before the California Air Resources Board, guiding the company with its application under the state's low carbon fuel standard so that when it is sold in the low transportation fuels market, it may generate valuable LCFS credits used to offset more highly carbon-intense fuels.

In the biofuels market, Broome resolved an Environmental Protection Agency enforcement action involving Iowa-based client Quad County Corn Processors by crafting a settlement over claims regarding its advanced biofuel. The deal cleared the way for the company to continue finding ways to reduce greenhouse gasses from renewable fuels through cellulosic biofuel production.

"This is an exciting and interesting time from the legal perspective to help companies sort all this out," Broome said.

-John Roemer