Green Diesel: Finding a Place for Algae Oil

The prospect of obtaining domestically-produced biodiesel from algae has attracted wide investor interest. Although many analysts predict that economic production is five to ten years away, the production process involves such a wide range of environmental and land use issues that it is not premature to begin thinking about the kinds of places in which green biodiesel could be efficiently made in the United States. Our land use and environmental laws were all drafted by people who never imagined the possibility that huge volumes of algae would be an important energy resource; nor could they have known that the location of algae farms would be dependent on a wide range of factors including terrain, climate and neighboring uses. This essay is a very preliminary examination of the potential legal issues posed by this potentially valuable resource

Background Principles of Wetlands Law: The Early History

15 pages. Contains 3 pages of references

Planning for a Bull Market for Wetlands

Until recently, wetlands had value in the marketplace only as targets for destruction. Today, wetlands often have market value for uses that do not require that they be dredged and filled. Such opportunities include: 1. Carbon storage offsets for greenhouse gas emissions; 2. Mitigation banks for destruction of other wetlands; 3. Conservation banks for wildlife protection; 4. Tradable water quality protection rights; 5. Sites for growing algae or other biofuel crops. These new uses have valid public benefits, but most laws and ordinances were not written with these possibilities in mind. Planners and lawyers need to think about ways to ensure that such proposals can be analyzed and regulated to consider their site-by-site impact on traditional wetland values