Land Use & Climate Change: Impacts on Planning and Project Approvals

To date, most of the efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions in response to climate change, have focused on electric power generation and transportation. As those efforts mature, more and more attention is being paid to land use planning and project review at the local level.

California, Washington, Oregon and Massachusetts have all passed legislation seeking to regulate GHG emissions in private development and environmentally sensitive projects through their environmental review process.

California passed a landmark statute, AB 32, which requires local governments to consider global warming impacts as part of their planning processes. The settlement agreement between the state and San Bernardino County sheds some light on how the state plans to implement that policy. There is a growing list of other pioneering efforts by local governments that we will address.

For this first-of-its-kind conference, we have assembled experts from early adopter jurisdictions, as well as leading California land use professionals, to provide insights for the local governments attorneys, planners, consultants and developers. Hear about the factors that go into a successful regulatory program, the appropriate scope of local review in Marin County and the City of Irvine and surrounding regions, and the best way for developers to respond to the concerns leading to these new regulations.