Support from local citizens is important for the scale-up of renewable energy. We investigate the impact of utility-scale wind and solar parks on employment, GDP and public finances in Brazilian municipalities using a difference-in-differences design with matching. We find a positive employment...

The solar industry in the US typically uses a credit score such as the FICO score as an indicator of consumer utility payment performance and credit worthiness to approve customers for new solar installations. Using data on over 800,000 utility payment performance and over 5,000 demographic...

Policies supporting investment in renewable electricity have been a cornerstone of climate policy in many parts of the world. While previous empirical work explores the economic and environmental impacts of renewable production, the focus has exclusively been on the short-run impacts of...

Solar geoengineering (SGE) can combat climate change by directly reducing temperatures. Both SGE and the climate itself are surrounded by great uncertainties. Implementing SGE affects learning about these uncertainties. We model endogenous learning over two uncertainties: the sensitivity of...

This study uses a large sample of homes in the San Diego area and Sacramento, California area to provide some of the first capitalization estimates of the sales value of homes with solar panels relative to comparable homes without solar panels. Although the residential solar home market...

Solar power is now economically competitive with fossil fuels in many countries, yet relatively few homeowners have installed solar panels on their property. A principal reason for this behavior stems from cognitive biases--such as myopia, inertia and herding--that cause consumers to avoid...

We develop a dynamic competitive equilibrium model of battery adoption and operations to evaluate the social value and adoption trajectory of utility-scale batteries and examine policy counterfactuals. The first battery unit breaks even in 2027 when renewable energy share reaches 52% and...

We study optimal climate policy when climate tipping points and solar geoengineering are present. Solar geoengineering reduces temperatures without reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Climate tipping points are irreversible and uncertain events that cause large damages. We analyze three different...

With dramatic declines in the cost of solar PV technology over the last 5 years, the electricity industry is in the midst of discussions about whether to use this low-polluting renewable energy source in grid-scale generation or in distributed generation (DG), mostly with rooftop solar PV....

We offer new evidence on indigenous innovation and intellectual returnees by estimating the relationship between patenting by Chinese photovoltaic firms and the presence of corporate leaders with international experience. Our research approach combines data from three sources: the industrial...