The Environmental Law Institute has recently initiated a year-long National Science Foundation-funded project to investigate impediments to and incentives for solar energy development.

Unlike earlier solar power research that has tended to concentrate on technological developments or on pure economic incentives, the Institute's study will focus on land use problems associated with the introduction of solar energy on a widespread basis, emphasizing the legal and institutional impediments and incentives to private-sector development. The project will investigate the relationship between the specialized needs of solar technology and land use controls. In addition, the study will explore other issues that do not fall within traditional definitions of "land use practices," including such potential impediments as the attitudes of land use officials toward innovative technologies.