Featured Paper!
Powering Rural Prosperity: The Local Economic Impact of Utility-Scale Wind and Solar Developments
Adrienne Ohler, Austin Landini & Michael Sykuta
Using county-level data on U.S. energy installations between 2001-2023, we examine how renewable energy adoption shapes sector-specific economic activity, focusing on GDP, employment, and wages in rural counties. Wind development is associated with significant GDP gains concentrated in the utilities sector, while solar development is associated with modest wage and employment gains driven largely by utilities and construction. For very large utility-scale solar (e.g. 5MW or 20MW) projects, agriculture, construction, and utility GDP increase with solar adoption. Neither technology reduces agricultural GDP, employment, or wages, providing little evidence of substantial disruption to agricultural production or related labor markets. These findings provide a more nuanced understanding of the local economic consequences of the energy transition and highlight the importance of technology type and sectoral composition in shaping rural development outcomes.
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Research Publications
Using county-level data on U.S. energy installations between 2001-2023, we examine how renewable energy adoption shapes sector-specific economic activity, focusing on GDP, employment, and wages in rural counties. Wind development is associated with significant GDP gains concentrated in the utilities sector, while solar development is associated with modest wage and employment gains driven largely by utilities and construction. For very large utility-scale solar (e.g. 5MW or 20MW) projects, agriculture, construction, and utility GDP increase with solar adoption. Neither technology reduces agricultural GDP, employment, or wages, providing little evidence of substantial disruption to agricultural production or related labor markets. These findings provide a more nuanced understanding of the local economic consequences of the energy transition and highlight the importance of technology type and sectoral composition in shaping rural development outcomes.
Read the Full Working Paper (preprint currently under peer-review)
Download the Research Brief
Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) in the U.S. has increased in the last decade and provides an important link between customers, their load, and the grid. Smart meters are an essential component in that link. However, little is known about the households that engage with their household energy interval data. We extend the previous literature on smart meters by examining the household characteristics associated with viewing smart-meter interval data and its association with annual household electricity use. Using data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) for 2015 and 2020, we find that household characteristics consistently associated with smart-meter data viewership across both survey waves include having internet access at ho*Corresponding author Email: me, solar generation, and the number of electronic devices. Appliance stock characteristics commonly associated with higher household electricity consumption (e.g. electric space heating, and electric vehicle ownership) are generally not strongly associated with smart-meter viewership. Among households with smart meters, viewership is associated with lower annual electricity use for households with electric space heating relative to households without electric space heating, although this association is less precise in 2020. We conclude with a discussion of implications for utility policymakers, focusing on strategies to increase customer engagement with AMI data and the importance of considering household heterogeneity when designing dynamic pricing and demand-side management programs.
Published in Utilities Policy, Vol 103, 2026