Abstract
The issuance of a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) license is an important milestone in the development process of new U.S. hydropower projects. The complexity and uncertain timeline of the licensing process have been often cited as a key deterrent to new hydropower installations in the United States. However, very little attention has been paid to post-licensing timelines and attrition rates. This article explores the challenges faced by developers in bringing their FERC-licensed hydropower projects to the construction stage. Post-licensing activities to be completed before starting construction include obtaining additional permitting from other federal or state agencies, completing the technical design, securing financing, and in most cases, negotiating a power purchase agreement. For the set of projects that obtained a FERC license between 2007 and 2018, we assembled a dataset—combining information from FERC dockets and responses from a questionnaire to developers—to calculate attrition rates and development timelines and to examine the reasons for delays and cancellations.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 106729 |
| Journal | Electricity Journal |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 2020 |
Funding
This work has been financially supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under the Water Power Technologies Office. The sponsor had no involvement in the study design, data collection, data analysis and writing of the manuscript.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| U.S. Department of Energy | |
| Water Power Technologies Office |
Keywords
- Attrition
- Hydropower
- Licensing timeline
- Power purchase agreement
