Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Lawyers?

As I mentioned briefly in my Greenbuild post at Green Building Law, legal issues, especially risk and liability associated with building green, were little discussed at Greenbuild.

A bunch of green building lawyers were sitting around and speculating why this might be. The conclusion we came to was that the U.S. Green Building Council did not want to highlight concerns or risks associated with building green at its feel-good festival. This is a mistake.

Lawyers, in their best role, are advisers that help clients avoid potential pitfalls. Someone once said that if you are involved in litigation, you have already lost. Litigation is expensive, time consuming and essentially a zero-sum game. Much litigation could be avoided if clients came to their lawyers and discussed potential legal liability ahead of time and took proactive steps to limit their exposure.

Read the rest of this post at Greenerbuildings.com

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Green Wombat had the following post about a proposed high voltage solar power project in Southern California. http://blogs.business2.com/greenwombat/2007/07/high-voltage-so.html
In short, the problem is that "SDG&E (SRE) needs to build a $1.3 billion, 150-mile transmission line through a state park and other environmentally sensitive lands to get the renewable energy to its customers. " Green Wombat.

The comments on Green Wombat focus on the viability of the high voltage solar power technology, but what interests me more (of course) is the impact of new power plants of any kind on the existing environmental law structure. Wind farms require vast expanses of land, and threaten birds and other animals. As this case indicates, large scale solar will require 1) the power plants themselves, and 2) the transmission lines to get the power to the grid. There will be an inevitable conflict between the Endangered Species Act, inter alia, that will result from what is essentially the construction of new power plants.

The question I pose is the following: should there be different standards applied to "green" power facilities?