UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Tara Righetti, Occidental Chair in Energy and Environmental Policies and professor of law the University of Wyoming, will give the talk “Land acquisition for carbon sequestration,” at 4 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 30, in 112 Walker Building at Penn State University Park. The talk also will be available via Zoom.

“Carbon sequestration will require massive amounts of subsurface property and sequestration operators must acquire the rights to the land,” Righetti said. “Rights are needed to conduct geophysical characterization activities, inject and store CO2, construct facilities, monitor plumes, conduct corrective action on existing wellbores and, eventually, abandon the CO2 in place. The acquisition of these rights adds cost and complexity to carbon removal, notwithstanding state laws which have endeavored to address information and coordination challenges that increase transaction costs and impede private contracting.”

Righetti will share the results of an empirical study of pore space acquisition agreements nationwide, including contract structure and valuation approaches. She will further illustrate how the approach to land acquisition for carbon removal projects contrasts with those established for other large, public good infrastructure projects.

Righetti is a recognized leader who engages with local, regional and national natural resource agencies and energy regulators, private industry, conservation organizations and communities. Regularly sought for her expertise and aid on major energy and carbon storage projects nationwide, she is a renowned expert on U.S. energy law. Her research focuses on subsurface property law and administrative regulation of energy development and industrial decarbonization technologies including nuclear energy and carbon capture and storage. This year, she was appointed as chair of the Carbon Capture, Utilization and Sequestration Permitting Task Force for Federal Lands and Outer Continental Shelf.

The talk is part of the EarthTalks fall 2024 series, “Legal Elements of the Energy Transition,” which explores the legal elements of decarbonizing the energy system. It features a series of Penn State and national experts who will discuss the legal environment for specific low-carbon technologies, and ways in which the legal system itself could or should be used to encourage a transition to cleaner energy technologies. For more information about the fall 2024 series, visit the EarthTalks website.