The US electric grid faces growing resiliency challenges due to climate change, increased frequency of extreme weather events, variability in water supply and renewable energy generation, land use conflicts, and rising demand related to sectoral electrification. Developing long-range capacity expansion plans that are robust to these challenges requires high-resolution modeling of power plant siting that can capture dynamic multisectoral and multiscale influences and constraints under varying socioeconomic and climate scenarios.

This presentation will compare power plant siting projections in the Western US under eight future 21^st century scenarios representing socioeconomic (SSP3 and SSP5), emissions (RCP8.5 and RCP4.5), and climate modeling uncertainties. We use the Capacity Expansion Regional Feasibility (CERF) model. CERF dynamically simulates regional siting processes by integrating high-resolution (1km) geospatially based policy, natural resource, and land use constraints with an economic objective function addressing locational interconnection costs and wholesale energy prices. For each scenario, CERF translates the US state-level capacity expansion plan produced by a national-to-global scale integrated human-Earth system model (GCAM-USA) into geolocated, individually sited power plants (includes renewable and non-renewable generation technologies).

Our results demonstrate the compounding impacts of energy system transitions, socioeconomics, climate change, and energy-water-land interactions on the power plant landscape over time. We show how local constraints such as solar and wind resource availability, land use policy, population density, and cooling water availability jointly influence power plant siting and identify whether the coarse-scale capacity expansion plans are feasible at an “on-the-ground” resolution.