About

Eco-Asset Solutions & Innovations (EASI) informs and advances the U.S. compensatory mitigation credit marketplace.  

The company, a limited liability corporation, provides solutions and innovative tools to support:

    - rural landowners who seek to maximize annual earnings as well as the appraised value of their land,
    - mitigation credit buyers who seek to minimize the cost of state and federal compensatory mitigation policies, and
    - agencies that seek to understand the value of mitigation credits to ensure compliance with no-net-loss resource management policies

The U.S. mitigation credit marketplace is a $200 billion industry (2017) with between $1.5-2 billion in annual sales.  Yet this is a fraction of the total potential value of ecological assets embedded in rural properties.  Why?  Because landowners don't typically understand the value of land based eco-assets. They don't know that ecological assets are anchored to the land like other natural resources such as minerals or oil and gas.  They don't think about the revenue potential of wetland, stream, species, habitat or water quality mitigation credits that could be developed and taken to market.  

Ecological assets (mitigation credits) can generate substantial annual revenues to supplement traditional farming and ranching, hunting and recreation land uses.  Not only are potential revenues significant, but land appraisal value can be boosted by including the estimated value of ecological assets in determining a property's highest and best use.  

EASI's Mitigation Credit Price Report (MCPR) is an important tool in this undertaking.  The MCPR is a wholly unique, proprietary data set representing over 1000 price points for U.S. mitigation credits.  The MCPR contains value references for every state with an active mitigation credit marketplace.

The MCPR breaks the hold of mitigation bankers on what was previously an opaque marketplace for mitigation credits.  For over 30 years sellers have withheld credit prices to protect their negotiating room with potential buyers.  The MCPR now makes the mitigation credit marketplace more transparent and therefore more competitive.  Buyers can discover the real sales value of mitigation credits in their area.  Investors can study mitigation credit price trends and market volatility.  Agencies can understand what a particular mitigation credit is really worth in setting policy incentives as well as compliance related penalties and fines.

In the final analysis, EASI data, methods and tools open the door for landowners to consider developing mitigation banks of their own.  Landowners can learn the type of mitigation credits a particular landscape might support.  They can learn the potential net present value of these assets when compared against development costs, nearby competition, and credit sale time lines.  Landowners can scenario plan costs vs. revenues in order to predict mitigation bank return on investment.  

Plus we work with dedicated MAI-certified appraisers who can report on the real value of their rural properties, taking eco-assets into consideration.

EASI's founder and CEO, William Coleman, has managed eco-asset valuation projects since the late 1990s.  His work included the first formal eco-asset valuation and appraisal (Allegheny Power's 12,000 acre Canaan Valley property) completed in 1999 and upheld in an opinion letter by the IRS.  He has participated in 25 mitigation credit development projects in the U.S., from Massachusetts to California and from Alaska to South Carolina.  He founded EASI in 2014 after managing PG&E's San Joaquin Valley Habitat Conservation Plan, then the nation's largest compensatory mitigation program covering nine counties in California's central valley and protecting 30 threatened and endangered species; Coleman oversaw mitigation credit acquisitions from twelve regional sellers to support the HCP's 30 year permit period.  As a mitigation credit developer, then buyer, he came to understand the strength's and weaknesses of the mitigation banking industry.  EASI, a sustainability enterprise, was thus founded to promote 'real value from investing in nature.'