March 12, 2021 - University of Minnesota Law School Professor Alexandra Klass said that increasing the amount of eminent domain authority given to some actors, and decreasing the amount given to others can help disincentive of the use of fossil fuels.
Klass' remarks were part of a presentation about her article published in the Wisconsin Law Review, “Eminent Domain Law as Climate Policy,” hosted by the University of Houston Law Center's Environment, Energy & Natural Resources Center. The presentation is part of the Energy Transition and Governance series, sponsored by the European Union through its Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant and the efforts of UH EENR Fellow (and Universite de Lyon III professor) Aubin Nzaou.
"Eminent domain is an incentive that in the U.S. we give to the private sector to build projects that are often built by government entities in other countries," Klass said. "We need to think about what projects do we want to give incentives for like eminent domain, and which projects do we not?
"For states enacting aggressive clean energy laws, maybe they should look at the use of eminent domain in their state law to eliminate or reduce the use of eminent domain for fossil fuel projects and then expand the ability to use eminent domain for clean energy projects."
Attendees received one hour of Texas continuing legal education credit.
Click here to watch Klass' complete remarks.
The next speaker in the series is University of Pittsburgh School of Law Professor Joshua Galperin. His discussion is titled, "Uncommon Law: Judging in the Anthropocene."
Prior speakers in the webinar series are Professor Lee Paddock of the George Washington University School of Law and Professor Roy Partain of the University of Aberdeen School of Law. Their presentations and future presentations can be found here: Marie Sklodowska-Curie Conferences (2020-2022) - The Environment, Energy & Natural Resources Center - University of Houston Law Center.
