Status: Published
**Citation:**Bistline, J. (2021). “Metrics for Assessing the Economic Impacts of Power Sector Climate and Clean Electricity Policies.” Progress in Energy, 3(4): 043001.
A new article “Metrics for Assessing the Economic Impacts of Power Sector Climate and Clean Electricity Policies” by John Bistline was recently published in Progress in Energy. Models are increasingly used to evaluate and inform electric sector policies to understand their ambition and tradeoffs. However, claims about economic impacts often lack transparency and may be based on incomplete metrics that can obscure differences in policy design. This paper examines metrics used to assess the economic impacts of electric sector policies and provides guidance on calculating, communicating, and interpreting these economic indicators.
Using an illustrative example of clean electricity standards, model outputs highlight strengths and limitations of different cost metrics. Power system changes with lower-carbon resources and zero-marginal-cost generation (especially wind and solar) entail shifts in when and where system costs are incurred. Since these changes may not be appropriately reflected in metrics such as wholesale energy prices, showing a decomposition of system costs across standard reporting categories could be a more robust reporting practice. In all cases, studies should be explicit about chosen metrics, how they are being calculated, and how insights could change with different metrics.
Link to Journal Publication: Metrics for assessing the economic impacts of power sector climate and clean electricity policies - IOPscience