‹ Our Work
Reports
-
Bubble or Nothing
Policymakers concerned about the deployment of clean energy and compute-focused infrastructure over the long term need a framework for managing the uncertainty in the AI sector’s investment landscape—and for understanding the local and regional impacts of a market correction that strands data centers and their energy projects.
-
Research note: Evaluating the impacts from reducing equity in investor-owned utility capital stacks in California
Read the full report here. Investor owned utilities (IOUs) have often presented concerns that the public development and financing of critical energy infrastructure such as transmission would weaken their financial position resulting in higher customer costs. IOUs often argue that increasing the percentage of debt on their books or lowering their potential rate base will…
-
What’s next for the LPO?
Read the full report here. Read our abridged list of recommendations here. Executive Summary The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, now made law, looks better for the Loan Programs Office than what the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee had initially proposed. That first draft both rescinded funding for and repealed the authorities of all…
-
Infill Nation: Reforming NEPA to Build More Housing
Read the full report here. Imagine if the Inflation Reduction Act had included the housing supply provisions from the House-passed Build Back Better Act. Based on the magnitude of the investments, the package would have provided tens of billions of dollars to build or rehabilitate millions of units of housing. That resulting influx of affordable…
-
Reimagining Economic Development: A Playbook for State Economic Development Agencies
Read the full report here. This report was written jointly with Charles Yang, Executive Director at the Center for Industrial Strategy. Sustained economic growth is the key driver for improving standards of living and national power. Levers for driving economic growth have received significant focus at the national level, such as through monetary policy and…
-
The Dealer Always Wins
Read the full report here. In previous publications we have described the dynamics holding back investment into the enhanced geothermal sector—namely, that the sector’s lack of project finance slows deployment and that lack of deployment, in turn, slows the maturation of the industry required to make it attractive to project finance lenders. Project debt investors…
-
Committing to the Drill Bit
Read the full report here. Executive summary Proponents of enhanced geothermal energy are correct that this nascent technology has incredible potential to decarbonize the U.S. energy system. Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) share drilling technologies with the shale fracking industry, making them a compelling option for policymakers looking to leverage existing American supply chains to drive…
-
Enhanced Geothermal Consortium for the Mountain West
Read the full report here. Next-generation geothermal technologies are at the frontier of energy development in the United States. Drawing on drilling techniques developed during the shale boom, enhanced geothermal drilling can open newer geologic formations with lower permeability to injected liquids. Heated liquid is then piped up to power turbines, generating a source of…
-
American Nuclear Moonshot
Access the report here. Despite growing policymaker and industry interest in nuclear power, the U.S. has failed to deploy more than one new nuclear power project in the past three decades. Why? The failure to deploy this “clean firm” source of power is the result of financing challenges, which are themselves the result of the…
-
Amortizing Public Capital: How to Advance Large Fixed Capital Projects
Access our new Elective Pay Model 3.0 here. Access the updated Elective Pay Model 3.0 Report here. The Center for Public Enterprise (CPE) is pleased to announce Version 3.0 of its Elective Pay model. It allows users to model publicly owned hydropower, nuclear, and geothermal projects (in addition to the solar, wind, and storage projects…
-
Project finance
Read our report on project finance here. Upstream of project developers are their financiers. The investment banks, pension funds, and asset managers looking to earn a return on their investments may legitimately be interested in the social and environmental benefits that infrastructure provides—but they are for certain more interested in the returns on their loans…
-
Public developers
Read our report on public developers here. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) have greatly expanded the reach of the public financing of renewable energy through tax credits and public lending programs. The goal of these policies is to help reduce the cost of capital for energy projects by utilizing the…