Long-term implications of sustained wind power growth in the United States: Potential benefits and secondary impacts

Abstract

We model scenarios of the U.S. electric sector in which wind generation reaches 10% of end-use electricity demand in 2020, 20% in 2030, and 35% in 2050. As shown in a companion paper, achieving these penetration levels would have significant implications for the wind industry and the broader electric sector. Compared to a baseline that assumes no new wind deployment, under the primary scenario modeled, achieving these penetrations imposes an incremental cost to electricity consumers of less than 1% through 2030. These cost implications, however, should be balanced against the variety of environmental and social implications of such a scenario. Relative to a baseline that assumes no new wind deployment, our analysis shows that the high-penetration wind scenario yields potential greenhouse-gas benefits of $85-$1,230 billion in present-value terms, with a central estimate of $400 billion. Air-pollution-related health benefits are estimated at $52-$272 billion, while annual electricsector water withdrawals and consumption are lower by 15% and 23% in 2050, respectively. We also find that a high-wind-energy future would have implications for the diversity and risk of energy supply, local economic development, and land use and related local impacts on communities and ecosystems; however, these additional impacts may not greatly affect aggregate social welfare owing to their nature, in part, as resource transfers.

Climate and health benefits of increasing renewable energy deployment in the United States*

“…The climate and health benefits of the growth in RE has been assessed historically [12], marginal benefits of incremental increases have been assessed for past years [13], and the benefits of either specific project types or projects in specific regions has been assessed [9,10,12,14,15]. To build on this, we evaluate a series of RE projects at different sizes and across all regions of the US for the year 2017, using consistent methods to estimate benefits, and using health benefit modeling that incorporates seasonal differences in health impacts of emissions.…”

The global climate value of offshore wind energy

“…A number of studies have addressed the question of the climate value of energy technologies, taking one of two approaches. One set of papers estimates the emissions avoided through the use of renewable energy technologies [10]. These papers take the climate policy as given, typically a Business-as-Usual (BAU) regime.…”

Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Approach for the Sustainable Autonomous Energy Generation through Renewable Sources. Studying Zakynthos Island in Greece

“…Usually, the full-load hours range between 16% and 60% annually (Badr, Atallah & Bayoumi, 2016). Worldwide, the long-term technical potential of wind power is believed to be many times of the total current global energy production (Wiser et al, 2016). Wind power is nowadays extensively used and especially in Europe, China and the USA.…”