Techno-Social Energy Infrastructure Siting: Sustainable Energy Modeling Programming (SEMPro)

Mark Abdollahian,Hal Nelson,Zining Yang

doi:10.18564/jasss.2199

Mark Abdollahian, Hal Nelson + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.18564/jasss.2199

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Abstract

Technical, environment, social, economic and political constraints are critical barriers to the development of new renewable energy supplies. SEMPro is an agent-based, predictive analytics model of energy siting policy in the techno-social space that simulates how competing interests shape siting outcomes to identify beneficial policy for sustainable energy infrastructure. Using a high voltage transmission line as a case study, we integrate project engineering and institutional factors with GIS data on land use attributes and US Census residential demographics. We focus on modeling citizen attitudinal, Community Based Organization (CBO) emergence and behavioral diffusion of support and opposition with Bilateral Shapley Values from cooperative game theory. We also simulate the competitive policy process and interaction between citizens, CBOs and regulatory, utility and governmental stakeholders using non-cooperative game theory. We find CBO formation, utility message and NGO messaging have a positive impact on citizen comments submitted as a part of the Environmental Impact Statement process, while project need and procedure have a negative impact. As citizens communicate and exchange political opinions across greater distances with more neighbors, less CBOs form but those that do are more effective, increasing the number of messages citizens send.

Highlights

1.1 Growing consumer demand for environmental sustainability coupled with new regulatory requirements have increased pressure on utilities, stakeholders, and government officials to find new and creative solutions to the complex problems of sustainable resource use
The size of Community Based Organization (CBO) circles indicates the number of messages sent by the CBO while color indicates support for or against the project, with red indicating opposition and blue showing support
As talkspan increases, we see a decrease in the total number of CBOs, but with many more citizens within a CBO, indicating increased social connectivity increases CBO efficacy

Summary

Introduction

1.1 Growing consumer demand for environmental sustainability coupled with new regulatory requirements have increased pressure on utilities, stakeholders, and government officials to find new and creative solutions to the complex problems of sustainable resource use. Entities span GIS attributes, power lines, agent individuals, the utility, CBO groups, as well as stakeholder and government agencies. State variables include disruption (the height and type of tower), talkspan (the distance within which citizens talk with each other), perceived project need, procedural justice, utility message, NGO message, and the political preferences in a local population.

Results

Conclusion