Shalini P. Vajjhala

Green Corridors: Linking Interregional Transmission Expansion and Renewable Energy Policies

A variety of recent policy measures have been advanced to promote interregional power transmission investment in the United States; among these are the designation of corridors on federal lands in western states and the identification of national interest electric transmission corridors across the country. Although these corridors have been put forward as critical policy interventions to modernize an aging transmission system, their effectiveness could be undermined by parallel policies, such as renewable portfolio standards (RPSs), designed to alter the landscape for new investment in generation capacity. This paper presents the results of a scenario analysis of the relationship between the interregional power grid and renewables policies to evaluate 1) the effects of state and national RPS policies on interregional power flows and 2) the impacts of transmission expansion on the locations and types of new, renewable sources for electricity capacity additions. Using the RFF Haiku Electricity Market Model, we find that the locations of transmission corridors could have a significant impact on the location, type, and marginal cost of generation in the future. Conversely, a national RPS would induce interregional power flows across the country significantly different from those that would prevail in the absence of such a policy. In particular, a national RPS would promote western renewables and shift power flows to the East. Under either a set of state-level RPS policies or a national RPS, the majority of power flowing into California will come from the Pacific Northwest, not from the Southwest, which is where corridors are most abundant. Additionally, a national RPS could motivate more than 10 GW of new biomass capacity in the Southeast, but grid expansion could shift 6 GW of this capacity to the Plains states and western wind.

Roads to Participatory Planning: Integrating Cognitive Mapping and GIS for Transport Prioritization in Rural Lesotho

It is increasingly understood that transport infrastructure and services are critical elements to achieving poverty reduction, gender equality, and sustainable development, but relevant methods to systematically characterize and address differences in mobility and access are lagging. This paper presents a series of maps based on an integrated pilot application of geographical information systems (GIS) and participatory sketch mapping to elicit and evaluate differential mobility and access patterns of villagers in the highlands of rural Lesotho. Fieldwork was carried out in the Senqu and Senqunyane Valleys in southern Lesotho - among the most isolated areas in the country - to link local - level information and perspectives on transport and other services to the enhanced GIS at the Ministry of Public Works and Transport. The resulting cognitive maps and focus group interviews reveal significant gender differences in mobility and access with implications for healthcare, education, and transport planning; they also provide a basis for cross-sectoral participatory decision making through the integrated GIS.

Determining the Extent of Market and Extent of Resource for Stated Preference Survey Design Using Mapping Methods

Determining the appropriate survey population and the commodity to be valued are among the most fundamental design decisions for stated preference (SP) surveys. However, often little information is available about who in the population holds measurable value for the resource (the extent of the market) and their perceptions regarding the scope of the resource to be valued (the extent of the resource). In this paper, we present a novel approach using cognitive mapping interview techniques to shed light on these design questions. The method also provides ancillary information that assists in the interpretation of information collected during focus groups and through SP survey administration. The approach was developed and tested as part of an ongoing study on environmental degradation associated with acidification in the Southern Appalachian Mountain region. Although damage from acidification in the study region is broad, it is not clear whether residents of this region care, in both a use and nonuse sense, about resources in their states of residence, in neighboring states, on public lands, or more broadly across the region. From a pilot study, we found that participants show a significant home-state preference in the number and size of natural areas that they value within the larger Southern Appalachian Mountain region. However, this preference is not strong enough to suggest that the market for improving these resources is solely constrained to residents of the state in which the resource is located.

Integrating EJ into Federal Policies and Programs: Examining the Role of Regulatory Impact Analyses and Environmental Impact Statements

Following Executive Order 12898 in 1994, federal agencies have taken a variety of steps to incorporate environmental justice (EJ) into their programs and practices. Two scales at which these efforts are critical are regulatory design and enforcement. This study evaluates Regulatory Impact Analyses (RIAs) and Environmental Impact Statements (EISs) across three federal agencies (the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, and the Environmental Protection Agency) to compare the extent to which EJ is addressed at these two scales, across agencies, and over time. By searching agency documents for key EJ variables, such as site, population, and impact characteristics, we develop a framework to determine if RIAs and EISs include sufficient information to identify disproportionate impacts of proposed regulations or projects on minority and low-income communities. Results of this analysis reveal that EJ issues are noted more frequently in all three agencies’ EISs over time, but few RIAs or EISs contain enough data to assess whether EJ impacts are significant.

Gender and GIS: Mapping the Links between Spatial Exclusion, Transport Access, and the Millennium Development Goals in Lesotho, Ethiopia, and Ghana

Spatial exclusion, and its gender dimensions, is an important component of social marginalization and vulnerability. T ransport infrastructure and services play a critical role in supporting mobility and access to basic services vital to achieving poverty reduction, gender equality, and sustainable development objectives. This paper explores how Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology can support integrated evaluations of the gender dimensions of transport using an innovative combination of community participatory mapping, new gender-disaggregated household-level Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), and transport sector GIS data. The pilot study focuses on three countries, Lesotho, Ethiopia, and Ghana, and reveals new opportunities for cross-scale evaluation.

Growing Complexities: A Cross-Sector Review of U.S. Biofuels Policies and Their Interactions

In the midst of concerns about U.S. energy security and climate change, a wider use of biomass and biofuels is promoted as one of the recipes for sustainability. The production and use of biofuels in the United States has rapidly increased in the last several years, promoted by a variety of government policies at the federal, state, and even local level. Many of these policies were crafted with focused objectives in mind and are targeted at specific segments of the biofuels market. Little is known, however, about the potential interactions of such policies and whether they are likely to reinforce or negate one another. In this paper, we provide an overview of the most prominent policies to date that impact the production and use of biofuels and biomass and outline their intended objectives and mechanisms. We focus on three economic sectors, electricity, transportation, and agriculture, and conduct a qualitative analysis of selected policy interactions. In particular, we describe hypothetical policy scenarios corresponding to various combinations of policies and analyze their potential outcomes. Finally, we briefly describe the impacts of those policies on other sectors such as food production, energy and environment, infrastructure, and the economy at large.

Long-Term Risks and Short-Term Regulations: Modeling the Transition from Enhanced Oil Recovery to Geologic Carbon Sequestration

Recent policy debates suggest that geologic carbon sequestration (GS) likely will play an important role in a carbon-constrained future. As GS evolves from the analogous technologies and practices of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations to a long-term, dedicated emissions mitigation option, regulations must evolve simultaneously to manage the risks associated with underground migration and surface tresspass of carbon dioxide (CO2). In this paper, we develop a basic engineering-economic model of four illustrative strategies available to a sophisticated site operator to better understand key deployment pathways in the transition from EOR to GS operations. All of these strategies focus on whether or not a sophisticated site operator would store CO2 in a geologic formation. We evaluate these strategies based on illustrative scenarios of (a) oil and CO2 prices; (b) leakage estimates; and (c) transportation, injection, and monitoring costs, as obtained from our understanding of the literature. Major results reveal that CO2 storage in depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs after oil recovery is associated with the greatest net revenues (i.e., the “most-preferred” strategy) under a range of scenarios. This finding ultimately suggests that GS regulatory design should anticipate the use of the potentially leakiest, or “worst,” sites first.