This report describes a proof-of-concept methodology for downscaling the onshore wind deployment projections from EPRI’s U.S. Regional Economy, Greenhouse Gas, and Energy Model (US-REGEN) to a spatial resolution suitable for assessing land-use and environmental impacts. While US-REGEN provides valuable insights into long-term energy transition pathways across the continental United States, its coarse regional resolution limits its ability to assess land-use and environmental impacts associated with future energy transitions. To address this gap, the study develops a high-resolution (1-km) geospatial dataset that identifies developable areas for wind energy while excluding protected and environmentally sensitive lands. This dataset is used to construct wind resource supply curves used in US-REGEN that enable the direct linkage of regional model outputs to the underlying geospatial data.
The downscaling approach allocates regional wind capacity additions from US-REGEN scenarios to specific locations based on resource quality, assuming preferential development in areas with higher wind speeds. This is demonstrated for the Western Interconnection, the framework enables mapping of projected wind deployment to geographically explicit locations, supporting future evaluation of land-use and environmental impacts. While the current approach does not incorporate key siting drivers such as policy, transmission access, or interconnection costs, it establishes a transparent and scalable foundation for linking capacity expansion modeling to spatial impact assessment and highlights priorities for further methodological refinement.