This paper by EPIcenter affiliate Gaurav Doshi examines how Texas’s $6.8 billion CREZ transmission expansion catalyzed wind deployments in the West and Panhandle region. Employing a discrete choice framework, developers were found to be 20 percentage points more likely to locate in CREZ counties, implying a willingness to pay of roughly $2,808 per MW of wind capacity (about $1,137 per acre) to site near new substations. A Difference-in-Difference analysis shows that counties designated for CREZ infrastructure saw about 100 MW of additional annual wind capacity than the control counties, translating to approximately $1.71 billion per year in avoided emissions. The benefits due to avoided emissions and higher lease payments to local landowners imply an impressively short payback of under four years. However, by 2020, inadequate transmission capacity in West Texas led to average hourly curtailments of about 120 MW during high‐wind periods, resulting in roughly $156 million in excess emissions annually, hinting at the perils of lagging transmission. Overall, the study underscores the need for long‐term transmission planning that combines engineerable right-of-way upgrades, policy levers to align costs with benefits, and strategic site selection to mitigate congestion risk.
This summary was written with the assistance of Microsoft Copilot on July 5th, 2025. Its content was edited and verified by EPIcenter staff and affiliates.
Read the full paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4928608