Using less fossil fuel to generate electricity, or “grid decarbonization,” will require massive deployments of large-scale renewable energy projects, especially solar and wind. As with previous energy transitions, clean energy deployment will create benefits and costs that are not evenly distributed across the population.
Researchers studying “energy justice” have begun to explore how clean energy benefits and costs will be distributed with respect to demographic factors such as income and race. Some propose to actively redistribute clean energy benefits to alleviate historical and ongoing social injustices. More recently, policymakers have begun to explore and implement interventions that would redistribute clean energy benefits and costs. The Biden Administration’s Justice40 initiative, for example, aims to ensure that at least 40 percent of the benefits of federally funded clean energy projects accrue to disadvantaged communities.
The concept of clean energy “benefits” can seem abstract. Some academic work focuses on the narrowly technological or economic benefits of renewable energy, such as impacts on electricity costs and benefits to electric grids, and the large-scale environmental benefits of displacing fossil fuel generation. Recently, researchers have begun to explore a broader range of benefits, including localized economic benefits for communities that host projects and less tangible benefits such as community empowerment.
In our work, we aim to understand the benefits of clean energy holistically. We focus on utility-scale solar, large arrays (greater than 1 MW) typically interconnected to grid substations or tapped transmission lines. Alongside utility-scale wind power, these will likely compose the vast majority of deployed electricity generation capacity in the coming decades. However, some of the benefits analyzed also apply at other scales (e.g., small-scale rooftop solar).
We identify a list of benefits through a comprehensive review of academic and grey literature and group them into four categories: economic, environmental, social (justice and equity), and technical. We also examine the scale, conditions, and metrics of each benefit. We identify a list of benefits that can be evaluated through clear metrics. Our framework is summarized in the following graphic.
Author Affiliations
- Katie Mummah, UW–Madison Department of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics PhD candidate, mummah@wisc.edu
- Sofia Taylor, UW–Madison Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering PhD candidate, smtaylor8@wisc.edu
- Manman Ding, UW–Madison La Follette School of Public Affairs graduate student
- Lew Blank, UW–Madison La Follette School of Public Affairs graduate student
- Cristina Crespo Montañés, University of California Berkeley Energy and Resources Group graduate student
- Eric O’Shaughnessy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Department of Electricity Markets and Policy research affiliate