Conference Agenda

Wind power plays a critical role in global decarbonization, yet its large-scale deployment may generate unintended ecological externalities. This paper examines the impact of onshore wind power development on rodent population dynamics, whose proliferation can pose risks to public health, and environmental stability. Using county-level wind farm installation data and rodent surveillance records from 2012 to 2023, we identify causal effects within a staggered difference-in-differences framework. The results show that both the presence and expansion of wind farms significantly increase local rodent population growth. Mechanism analyses indicate that these effects operate through predator release and habitat modification channels. The impacts are more pronounced in low-altitude areas and in regions with lower public sanitation investment, suggesting that local environmental management can mitigate rodent proliferation. Our findings highlight that, alongside its climate benefits, wind power can reshape terrestrial ecological dynamics, underscoring the need to incorporate ecological and pest-control considerations into renewable energy planning.

This paper estimates the effect of residential rooftop solar systems on housing sale prices in Delaware and examines heterogeneity across system attributes. We construct a novel property-level dataset by merging solar installation records, historical property characteristics, single-property transaction data, and renovation permit records. We employ both cross-sectional hedonic price and repeat-sales models to estimate the marginal impacts of solar on home sales prices. Our preliminary results indicate that homes sold with solar systems have an average price premium of approximately 5.6% to 7.6% relative to comparable non-solar homes, even after controlling for recent home renovations. This corresponds to an average premium of approximately $16,613 to $22,379 at the time of sale, which is higher than the average installation cost of a solar system in Delaware, $14,781, with incentives. This suggests that, on average, solar is fully capitalized at the time of resale and recovers 112%-125% of solar cost. However, we observe that solar systems were fully capitalized when homes were sold within the first three years of installation, but that capitalization rates decline afterwards. For instance, after 4-6 years, solar systems are capitalized at about 72%-82% of the system cost (including incentives). Accounting for discounting, this is in line with expectations. We also found that homes with owned solar systems had a higher price premium than homes with leased solar systems. Additionally, capitalization effects were greater in metropolitan areas than in non-metropolitan regions. The findings offer meaningful guidance for homeowners evaluating solar investments and for policymakers and solar market stakeholders in designing effective incentives and motivating homeowners to adopt solar. Given the low-penetration of solar in Delaware relative to other states (like California and Massachusetts) that have been the focus of previous studies, we also provide particular insights in areas with high potential for increased adoption.

Improving energy efficiency in the residential sector and shifting away from fossil fuel–based heating are crucial for achieving net-zero energy systems. Here, we present empirically grounded projections of the demand for low-carbon energy technologies among private households. Using a nationwide discrete-choice experiment involving 1,676 homeowners from all regions of Switzerland, we examine how technology demand is influenced by subsidies and peer effects. We find substantial demand among homeowners for capital-intensive, decentralized technologies, such as rooftop photovoltaic systems, envelope retrofits, and heat pumps, which can be increased further through subsidies. In contrast, subsidies have little impact on the demand for centralized technologies. Electricity storage solutions are generally not attractive to homeowners unless they are combined with other technologies. At the current speed of technology adoption, peer effects will play a minor role in stimulating technology demand, even when technologies are heavily subsidized. This calls for further efforts to remove the barriers to technology adoption that currently hinder the spread of technologies through peer influence.

The relationship between willingness to pay (WTP) for energy technologies and knowledge and prior experience with specific and/or substitute technologies is well established in the literature. Using data from a largescale study examining WTP for carbon capture and storage (CCS), we use a unique timing of survey launch and a national media TV feature about national CCS plans to test if the TV feature impacts WTP and the relationship between WTP impact, CCS scope (5M tons vs 10M tons) and CCS information given in the evaluation study. We find a significant and positive relationship between having seen the TV feature and the WTP for CCS. However, the tv-feature WTP premium is only significant among respondents in the 10 M tons scenario. The results also denote that the TV feature effects are independent on the level of CCS information the respondents receive in the survey.