Achievement

An interdisciplinary team composed of an IGERT Scholar and four faculty members from four different departments has begun work on a project to develop an energy-pricing strategy that incorporates the full range of economic, social, and environmental costs and benefits associated with energy generation. This project will formalize a technology-neutral, benefit-pricing-policy blueprint. One outcome will be an Excel-based energy-pricing tool. In addition, the report will recommend appropriate valuation methodologies for pricing benefits in the context of an adders policy, and it will provide a range of benefit estimates for electricity production attributes identified by the Colorado Governor's Energy Office as important. These include water use, emissions of carbon dioxide, mercury, nitrous oxide, and sulfur dioxide, as well as electricity attributes, such as peak energy production and energy dispatch power.