Using a new USA multi-region input output (MRIO) model for assessing economic and energy impacts of wind energy expansion in USA

Abstract The share of wind energy in the US energy supply has been steadily increasing in the last two decades. With new wind energy farms being installed in various states of the country, local and multi-regional economic disruptions are bound to take place. The multi-regional economic impacts of installing new wind farms was determined using the US multi-region input-output (US-MRIO) model that has been developed, also called the USLab. Currently, there is a lack of multi-regional impact assessment of wind energy expansion in the US. In this article, we use the US-MRIO to determine regional and sectoral spill-over effects resulted from installation of wind energy farms in 10 US states. The economic impacts were calculated by feeding the USLab with data obtained from the Jobs and Economic Development Impacts (JEDI) Wind model published by National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The JEDI wind model provides the change in local economic data such as the number of new jobs created and increase of energy-related products in each region in the final demand and value-added. The data about final demand and value-added change was used with the US-MRIO model to account for the multi-regional economic impact across US due to installation of wind energy farms. The year of wind farm installation was set to 2017 and a US-MRIO for 2017 was generated to calculate the economic impact. The total economic impact was found to be 26 billion dollars of which 3 billion dollars was associated with the states where no new wind energy capacity was installed. Installation of new energy production capacity also results in “change in energy consumption” across US. Using the US-MRIO model and the energy intensity of manufacturing sectors, the energy consumption increase due to addition of wind farms was found to be about 6952 trillion of btu for the total change in economic throughput. Primary metal manufacturing and Machinery manufacturing sectors stood out amongst other manufacturing sectors with considerable change in energy consumption with an increase of 3074 trillion of btu and 1537 trillions of btu.