Evaluating the economic return to public wind energy research and development in the United States

The U.S. government has invested in wind energy research since 1976. Building on a literature that has sought to develop and apply methods for retrospective benefit-to-cost evaluation for federal research programs, this study provides a quantitative analysis of the economic social return on these historical wind energy research investments. Importantly, the study applies multiple innovative methods and varies important input parameters to test the sensitivity of the results. The analysis considers public wind research expenditures and U.S. wind power deployment over the period 1976–2017, while also accounting for the full useful lifetime of wind projects built over this period. Assessed benefits include energy cost savings and health benefits due to reductions in air pollution. Overall, this analysis demonstrates sizable, positive economic returns on past wind energy research. Under the core analysis and with a 3% real discount rate, the net benefits from historical federal wind energy research investments are found to equal $31.4 billion, leading to an 18 to 1 benefit-to-cost ratio and an internal rate of return of 15.4%. Avoided carbon dioxide emissions are not valued in monetary terms, but are estimated at 1510 million metric tons. Alternative methods and input assumptions yield benefit-to-cost ratios that fall within a relatively narrow range from 7-to-1 to 21-to-1, reinforcing in broad terms the general finding of a sizable positive return on investment. Unsurprisingly, results are sensitive to the chosen discount rate, with higher discount rates leading to lower benefit-to-cost ratios, and lower discount rates yielding higher benefit-to-cost ratios

A Policy Project: Implementing Safe Firearm Storage Legislation in Kentucky

Ensuring the safe storage of firearms in the home is a research-supported method of reducing the incidence of firearm injury and death, specifically unintentional injury and self-harm in the pediatric population. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends keeping all firearms stored locked, unloaded, and separate from ammunition. While evidence shows that implementing laws regulating the storage of firearms can be effective to reduce morbidity and mortality, the state of Kentucky currently has no such regulations. For this DNP project, John Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework was used as a guideline for policy analysis with the intention of identifying opportunities to advocate for legislative action on this issue (2003). A 4-part intervention including participation in the legislative process and grassroots advocacy efforts was completed, as well as partnering with a legislator to introduce new legislation. House Bill 292 “An act Relating to Gun Safety for Children” was introduced in the 2022 Kentucky legislative session. Although this bill did not pass into legislation, advocacy efforts were effective in spreading awareness of the issue to make conditions more favorable for future legislation in Kentucky. Keywords: safe storage laws, child access law, health policy, firearms, gun safet

Benchmarking Utility-Scale PV Operational Expenses and Project Lifetimes: Results from a Survey of U.S. Solar Industry Professionals

This paper draws on a survey of solar industry professionals and other sources to clarify trends in the expected useful life and operational expenditure (OpEx) of utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) plants in the United States. Solar project developers, sponsors, long-term owners, and consultants have increased project-life assumptions over time, from an average of ~21.5 years in 2007 to ~32.5 years in 2019. Current assumptions range from 25 years to more than 35 years depending on the organization; 17 out of 19 organizations surveyed or reviewed use 30 years or more. Levelized, lifetime OpEx estimates have declined from an average of ~$35/kWDC-yr for projects built in 2007 to an average of ~$17/kWDC-yr in 2019. Across 13 sources, the range in average lifetime OpEx for projects built in 2019 is broad, from $13 to$25/kWDC-yr. Operations and maintenance (O&M) costs—one component of OpEx—have declined precipitously in recent years, to $5-8/kWDC-yr in many cases. Property taxes and land lease costs are highly variable across sites, but on average are—together—of similar magnitude. Other OpEx line items include security, insurance, and asset management. Given 2007-2009 values for not only project life and OpEx but also other drivers of the levelized cost of energy (LCOE, excluding the investment tax credit), the LCOE for utility-scale PV projects built from 2007 through 2009 averaged$305/MWh. Using 2019 values for all parameters yields an average LCOE of $51/MWh. The decline in LCOE from$305/MWh to $51/MWh was predominantly caused by reductions in up-front expenditures (and, to a much lesser extent, by changes in capacity factors, financing costs, and tax rates), but 9$22/MWh) of the overall decline is due to improvements in project life and OpEx. Project life extensions and OpEx reductions have had similarly sized impacts on LCOE over this period, at $11/MWh each. Had project life and OpEx not improved over the last decade, LCOE in 2019 would have instead been$73/MWh—43% higher. Given the limited quantity and comparability of previously available data on these cost drivers, the data and trends presented here may inform assumptions used by electric system planners, modelers, and analysts. The results may also provide useful benchmarks to the solar industry, helping developers and assets owners compare their expectations for project life and OpEx with those of their peers