Three Essays on the Financial Returns to Residential Solar PV Adoption

As the effects of climate change continue to accelerate, threatening human life and the environment worldwide, the need to decarbonize our energy system is urgent and imperative. Solar photovoltaic (PV) technology is an important component of the United States’ decarbonization strategy. Solar diffusion policies like net metering, tax incentives, and renewable energy certificates create financial value for adopters. Evaluations of those policies tend to focus on adoption as the primary metric of success: more households adopting solar means less reliance on fossil fuels and fewer carbon emissions. However, adoption alone as a success metric fails to account for a policy’s equitability. My research attempts to provide more information on the equity implications of solar policy by answering the following questions: what are the financial benefits of installing solar panels to adopters (direct and indirect), how large are those benefits, and how do those benefits vary by an adopter’s race and income? In Chapter 1, I examine the distribution of financial returns to solar adoption in Massachusetts by system ownership status (leased or owned), income, and race. I find that direct financial returns that accrue to households with owned systems are over 300% higher on average than for leased systems. I also find that neighborhoods with more low-income and non-White households receive lower financial returns compared to other neighborhoods, mostly because these households tend to lease their panels. In Chapter 2, I turn my focus to the indirect financial benefits of solar PV adoption. One type of indirect benefit is the solar home price premium, or the increase in home sales price due to solar panel adoption. I estimate the price premium for solar homes in Massachusetts. I find a price premium ranging from 5.9-12.2% depending on model specification, representing a $14,000-29,000 value for the median-priced home in my data. The solar home price premium appears to be decreasing over time as more households adopt. I also pair demographic data with individual solar households and find a stark underrepresentation of Black, Hispanic, and low-income solar owners. In Chapter 3, I further explore the property value impacts of renewable energy adoption by investigating spillover effects of the solar home price premium. I estimate how a neighbor’s adoption of solar PV affects a non-solar home’s sales price. Using data from Massachusetts and three hedonic models, I find a negative relationship between the number of solar neighbors within one mile of a non-solar home and the non-solar home’s sales price. The negative relationship increases as the radial definition of the “neighborhood” decreases, with a -0.9$1,908 to -$5,963 per additional solar neighbor for the median-valued home during the study period. This negative price effect may reflect solar PV’s increasing market penetration in Massachusetts, meaning that as adoption becomes more popular, homes without solar PV are at a slight disadvantage in the housing market. Understanding the total financial value of solar adoption and how that value is distributed among groups is important for crafting equitable energy transition policies

Graduate Employment in the UK: An Application of the Gottschalk-Hansen Model

There is an apparent inconsistency in the existing literature on graduate employment in the UK. While analyses of rates of return to graduates or graduate markups show high returns, suggesting that demand has kept up with a rapidly rising supply of graduates, the literature on over-education suggests that many graduates are unable to find employment in graduate jobs and the proportion over-educated has risen over time. Using a simple supply and demand model applied to UK data that defines graduate jobs in terms of the proportion of graduates and/or the graduate earnings markup within occupations, we find that the employment of graduates in non-graduate jobs has declined over time. Hence, there is no evidence of an over-production of graduates in the UK.employment, wages, education, graduates

Characterisation of amorphous pharmaceutical materials

Small quantities of amorphous content can have a profound influence on the properties of a material, however their instability means that quantifying amorphous content over time is important for proving the stability of a drug. Quantifying amorphous content in α-lactose monohydrate by solid state 13C CP MAS NMR, has been carried out by use of proton saturation recovery relaxation and differentiating between spectra by partial least squares (PLS), however these techniques have not proved sensitive on their own, this work investigates their sensitivity in combination. Crystalline α-lactose monohydrate and a rapidly quenched melt were combined to create a set of calibration mixes, whose spectra were recorded using proton saturation recovery relaxations ranging from 2 to 60 seconds. This technique showed a limit of detection of 0.17% (LOD = intercept + 3xSy/x), with a relaxation delay of 15 s and was able to recognise amorphous materials generated by spray and freeze drying. The atmospheric effects on the proton saturation recovery relaxation times of different amorphous lactose preparations were investigated. This found that an oxygen atmosphere reduced the relaxation times, of amorphous lactose that was prepared from a rapidly quenched melt. The loss of moisture from spray dried and freeze dried samples to less than 1% removed the significance of this effect. Lactose is an important excipient in pharmaceuticals and a key ingredient of confectionary, very little research has been carried out in to the quantification of the isomers of different preparations of amorphous lactose. This work quantifies the isomer content by Gas Chromatography with Flame Ionisation Detection (GC-FID) using a DB-17 15m 0.53mm 1.00 μm column and derivatisation with N- (trimethylsilyl)imidazole. [Continues.

Reflexiones psicodinámicas sobre las características sociológicas de la opinión pública sobre la drogadicción.

El presente trabajo se abre con un análisis del significado sociológico del fenómeno de la desviación social. Este análisis nos llevará a la conclusión de que es posible considerar nuestra reacción frente a fenómenos de este tipo como subjetiva, y con una componente moral. Veremos que esta reacción moral tiene una base inconsciente, que tiene sus raíces en lo que Freud llamó "conciencia tabú". El análisis del fenómeno del tabú, siguiendo a Freud, nos permitirá profundizar en el "eco" que despierta el fenómeno de la drogodependencia en el inconsciente del público