Abstract for: A Roadmap to Modeling Economic and Environmental Impacts of Clean Energy Policies

As the emergency of climate change rises, electricity generation is increasingly moving away from fossil fuel towards renewable energy (RE) integration into the US grid. This is mainly due to the cost-effectiveness of new RE technologies, and state and federal government regulations including renewable portfolio standards. Recently, several states mandated 100% clean energy policy by a specific timeline (majority by 2045), while more states have either passed or working towards passage (i.e., governors’ pledge) of such policies in the form of executive orders. Such regulations are established to address climate change, while they also have the potential to impact both the nation’s economy as a whole and those of the corresponding states. There is not a succinct agreement in the literature surrounding the impact of these policies on regional economies, especially on employment. Neither is there an agreed-upon model that quantifies both the economic and environmental impacts on a more granular level, such as county-wide impacts. We provide a roadmap of how to achieve a certain clean energy requirement by a specific timeline. Integrating results from various methodologies such as econometrics, input-output, and GIS, we build a unique system dynamics model that estimates the economic and environmental impacts of such policies.