Women in Real Estate 2020: Cox Castle’s Anne Mudge Leads as a Permitting Counsel

Cox, Castle & Nicholson, LLP’s Anne Mudge is a leading California land use and permitting lawyer. She is a partner in the San Francisco office of the real estate-focused law firm and has been co-lead of its award-winning land use and natural resources team of 23 attorneys for the past decade.

Through her practice, she has been intimately involved in California’s solar, wind and battery storage energy boom and has been permitting counsel for more installed megawatts (MW) of renewable energy than any other lawyer in the state. In 2019 and 2020, she was lead permitting counsel on numerous utility-scale wind energy projects and battery storage projects throughout the state.

She recently played a critical role in securing unanimous approval from the County of San Bernardino Board of Supervisors on behalf of San Francisco-based Clearway Energy Group to develop the largest solar energy facility to-date in North America. Located east of Barstow, the 650-MW Daggett solar power facility will feature 450 MW of battery-storage capacity, making it the largest battery storage project outside of Australia.

During her 30-year career, Mudge has made a name for herself nationally as a land use and renewable energy permitting authority. Her expertise spans some of the country’s most challenging land use and environmental regulations, such as the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), California zoning and planning laws, and state and federal laws related to wetlands and endangered species, water supply planning, subdivisions, annexation, coastal development and the Williamson Act.

Her practice is statewide, and she has helped permit dozens of multimillion-dollar utility-scale energy projects on public and private land across nearly every California county. In addition to supporting the state’s effort to boost renewable energy, her practice focuses on developing in-fill housing projects, schools, hospitals, hotels, vineyards, and master-planned communities, among other projects. Many of these projects are based in her hometown, Oakland, and she leverages her long experience with the city’s entitlement process to help create solutions aimed at addressing its unprecedented housing crisis.

These are just a few of the reasons we chose Mudge as one of the 2020 Women in Real Estate Award winners in California. Connect Media’s Women in Real Estate Awards honor the achievements and inspirational stories of women who have reached respected positions of leadership and play key mentorship roles for others.

Mudge currently serves on the board of the Chabot Space and Science Center, a non-profit institution and community resource whose mission is to inspire and educate learners of all ages about the universe and planet earth. She also served on the board of Bay Area Wilderness Training (BAWT) from 2014 to 2017, a project of Earth Island Institute, which creates opportunities for urban youth to experience wilderness first-hand through professional wilderness leadership training. Mudge has volunteered her time and talents to a host of Oakland-based organizations in the last two decades including a youth soccer organization, a youth rowing club, and herself earning a Gold medal in US Rowing National Championships on Oakland’s Lake Merritt in 2018.

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