State-level trends in renewable energy procurement via solar installation versus green electricity

In recent years, options for procuring renewable energy have increased, ranging from rooftop solar installation to utility green pricing to Community Choice Aggregation. These options vary in terms of costs and benefits to the consumer as well as grid integration implications. However, little is known regarding how the presence of a wide range of voluntary utility-scale renewable procurement options as well as their growth could affect adoption of distributed residential solar. To examine this relationship, we fit a two-stage least squares random effects regression model on panel data from 2016 to 2019 for all fifty US states plus the District of Columbia, controlling for variables that measure state-level policies, economic factors, and resource availability. Although there was no evidence of a strong relationship between demand for utility-scale and distributed options across all states, the state-level correlations suggest a wide variation between states including a positive, zero or negative relationship between utility-scale and distributed generation.

Automated summary

In recent years, there has been an increase in options for procuring renewable energy, ranging from rooftop solar installation to utility green pricing to Community Choice Aggregation. However, little is known about how the presence and growth of these utility-scale renewable procurement options could affect the adoption of distributed residential solar. A regression model analysis on panel data from all fifty US states plus the District of Columbia revealed wide variations between states, including varying correlations between utility-scale and distributed generation.