Renewable energy policy & economics research

NAU has partnered with Utah Clean Energy and Interwest Energy Alliance to establish a wind policy resource center. This is a part of  the Department of Energy and National Renewable Energy Laboratory program to establish six new Wind Energy Regional Resource Centers. Researchers are providing information to local and state decision-makers across the region to improve policies for the development and utilization of utility-scale wind energy. Researchers submit formal comments on regulatory processes and documents and offer educational opportunities for decision-makers and the interested public.
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Roles of the resource center:

•  Provide accurate, impartial information about challenges facing wind deployment to aid in efforts to overcome or mitigate these challenges
• Use best practices in education and outreach to deliver information and create an educated stakeholder community
• Work with decision-makers to ensure that they have the tools to make informed decisions about wind energy projects and related policies in their jurisdiction.

This report details utility-scale renewable energy projects on Arizona’s public, private, Native American, and military land. For each jurisdiction details are presented on the size, technology, and status of projects. This serves as a bases for policy makers in Arizona to understand the current status of renewable energy capacity in the state. This report includes a general introduction to renewable energy development in Arizona, technological descriptions of the differing renewable energy generators, modeling of economic impacts from renewable energy development, resource maps, installed capacity maps, and appendices that include additional resources and links to permitting guidelines.

Through a project in 2009-2010, NAU worked to identify and report policy solutions for increasing the economic benefits of renewable energy development to states and tribal communities. This research was developed through interviews with state, county, and tribal decision-makers who had dealt with building or permitting renewable energy projects and experienced firsthand the economic, policy, and other common obstacles to such projects. Results were presented at the ASME International Conference on Energy Sustainability in 2010.

NAU researchers, in partnership with a number of experts across campus departments, investigated the potential impacts and economic benefits that Arizona might experience from the institution of a national climate change mitigation policy. Results were presented at a series of professional meetings and distributed to policymakers across the region.

NAU researchers worked with General Electric and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory on the Western Wind and Solar Integration Study from 2008-2010. Through NAU’s involvement in this project, research has focused on the dataset for Arizona, determining the emissions benefits, water savings, and economic impacts associated with renewable energy development to meet as much as 35% of electricity demand across the west.

In partnership with NAU’s Tribal Clean Energy Resource Center, energy research serves as a technical resource for renewable energy resource assessment and policy development for tribes across the region, currently including a solar technical resource assessment for the Jemez Pueblo and wind resource assessment and energy policy development support for the Hopi Tribe. NAU’s work with tribal partners promotes renewable energy as an economic development strategy. For more information, contact NAU Project Director Karin Wadsack, karin.wadsack@nau.edu.