IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rff/dpaper/dp-06-34.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Siting Renewable Energy Facilities: A Spatial Analysis of Promises and Pitfalls

Author

Listed:
  • Vajjhala, Shalini

    (Resources for the Future)

Abstract

Recent efforts to site renewable energy projects have provoked as much, if not more, opposition than conventional energy projects. Because renewable energy resources are often located in sensitive and isolated environments, such as pristine mountain ranges or coastal waters, siting these facilities is especially difficult. Moreover, the viability of different renewable energy projects depends not only on complex economic and environmental factors, but also on the availability of supporting infrastructures, such as transmission lines. This paper examines the spatial relationships between four types of renewable energy resources – wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass – and an empirical measure of state-level transmission-line siting difficulty. Analyses explore the locations of renewable resource potential relative to areas of high siting difficulty, state electricity demand and imports, and states with renewable portfolio standards (RPSs). Major results reveal that state resource potential varies, and siting is significantly more difficult in states that import electricity and those with RPSs. These results suggest that states with the greatest incentives to develop renewable energy also face the most serious obstacles to siting new facilities.

Suggested Citation

  • Vajjhala, Shalini, 2006. "Siting Renewable Energy Facilities: A Spatial Analysis of Promises and Pitfalls," RFF Working Paper Series dp-06-34, Resources for the Future.
    • Handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-06-34
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.rff.org/RFF/documents/RFF-DP-06-34.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. McVeigh, James & Burtraw, Dallas & Darmstadter, Joel & Palmer, Karen L., 1999. "Winner, Loser, or Innocent Victim? Has Renewable Energy Performed As Expected?," Discussion Papers 10627, Resources for the Future.
    2. Berry, David, 2002. "The market for tradable renewable energy credits," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 369-379, September.
    3. Kahn, Robert D., 2000. "Siting Struggles: The Unique Challenge of Permitting Renewable Energy Power Plants," The Electricity Journal, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 21-33, March.
    4. Bolinger, Mark & Wiser, Ryan & Milford, Lew & Stoddard, Michael & Porter, Kevin, 2001. "States Emerge as Clean Energy Investors: A Review of State Support for Renewable Energy," The Electricity Journal, Elsevier, vol. 14(9), pages 82-95, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Timothy Fraser & Lily Cunningham & Amos Nasongo, 2021. "Build Back Better? Effects of Crisis on Climate Change Adaptation Through Solar Power in Japan and the United States," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 21(1), pages 54-75, Winter.
    2. Lewis, Geoffrey McD., 2008. "High value wind: A method to explore the relationship between wind speed and electricity locational marginal price," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 33(8), pages 1843-1853.
    3. Lewis, Geoffrey McD., 2010. "Estimating the value of wind energy using electricity locational marginal price," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(7), pages 3221-3231, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sgouridis, Sgouris & Kennedy, Scott, 2010. "Tangible and fungible energy: Hybrid energy market and currency system for total energy management. A Masdar City case study," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 1749-1758, April.
    2. Wirth, Steffen, 2014. "Communities matter: Institutional preconditions for community renewable energy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 236-246.
    3. Coulon, Michael & Khazaei, Javad & Powell, Warren B., 2015. "SMART-SREC: A stochastic model of the New Jersey solar renewable energy certificate market," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 13-31.
    4. Christiansen, Atle Christer, 2002. "New renewable energy developments and the climate change issue: a case study of Norwegian politics," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 235-243, February.
    5. Winston Harrington & Richard D. Morgenstern & Peter Nelson, 2000. "On the accuracy of regulatory cost estimates," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(2), pages 297-322.
    6. Reinhard Madlener & Weiyu Gao & Ilja Neustadt & Peter Zweifel, 2008. "Promoting renewable electricity generation in imperfect markets: price vs. quantity policies," SOI - Working Papers 0809, Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich.
    7. Rasmussen, Tobias N., 2001. "CO2 abatement policy with learning-by-doing in renewable energy," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 297-325, October.
    8. Berry, David, 2002. "The market for tradable renewable energy credits," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 369-379, September.
    9. Haggett, Claire, 2011. "Understanding public responses to offshore wind power," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 503-510, February.
    10. Woodward, Richard T., 2011. "Double-dipping in environmental markets," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 153-169, March.
    11. Karen Maguire & Abdul Munasib, 2013. "Do Renewables Portfolio Standards Increase Electricity Prices? A Synthetic Control Approach," Economics Working Paper Series 1403, Oklahoma State University, Department of Economics and Legal Studies in Business, revised Aug 2013.
    12. Wolsink, Maarten, 2007. "Wind power implementation: The nature of public attitudes: Equity and fairness instead of 'backyard motives'," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 11(6), pages 1188-1207, August.
    13. Nagl, Stephan, 2013. "Prices vs. Quantities: Incentives for Renewable Power Generation - Numerical Analysis for the European Power Market," EWI Working Papers 2013-4, Energiewirtschaftliches Institut an der Universitaet zu Koeln (EWI).
    14. Zhu, Lei & Fan, Ying, 2010. "Optimization of China's generating portfolio and policy implications based on portfolio theory," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 1391-1402.
    15. Jun, Eunju & Joon Kim, Won & Hoon Jeong, Yong & Heung Chang, Soon, 2010. "Measuring the social value of nuclear energy using contingent valuation methodology," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 1470-1476, March.
    16. Haase, Rachel & Bielicki, Jeffrey & Kuzma, Jennifer, 2013. "Innovation in emerging energy technologies: A case study analysis to inform the path forward for algal biofuels," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 1595-1607.
    17. Palmer, Karen & Burtraw, Dallas, 2005. "Cost-effectiveness of renewable electricity policies," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 873-894, November.
    18. Jones, Christopher R. & Richard Eiser, J., 2010. "Understanding 'local' opposition to wind development in the UK: How big is a backyard?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 3106-3117, June.
    19. Kristoffer Palage & Robert Lundmark & Patrik Söderholm, 2019. "The innovation effects of renewable energy policies and their interaction: the case of solar photovoltaics," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 21(2), pages 217-254, April.
    20. Martin, Nigel & Rice, John, 2015. "Improving Australia's renewable energy project policy and planning: A multiple stakeholder analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 128-141.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    siting; renewable energy; transmission lines; wind; solar; geothermal; biomass; geographic information systems (GIS); renewable portfolio standards (RPS);
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L94 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Electric Utilities
    • L98 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Government Policy
    • Q42 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Alternative Energy Sources
    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-06-34. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Resources for the Future (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rffffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.