2026 Theses Doctoral

Essays in Energy Investment

Zhang, Yuqi

This dissertation examines the economics of energy investment. The first chapter studies how place-based subsidies for renewable energy affect the allocation of investment and generate localized economic effects. I develop a quantitative multi-region model with electricity markets to evaluate recent U.S. policy. I find that place-based targeting attracts new investment to targeted areas, but can displace investment in non-targeted areas through lower electricity prices. Economic benefits spill over to non-targeted areas via shared electricity markets. Relative to a place-neutral policy of equal fiscal cost, the place-based design trades some aggregate renewable generation for geographic targeting.

The second chapter studies the ownership of coal-fired power plants, the world's largest single source of carbon emissions. Using plant-level microdata, we document key empirical facts about coal plant ownership in the EU. We find that public equity ownership has declined significantly while state ownership has risen steadily. The decline in the public equity share has been driven by faster reductions in utilization rather than asset sales. We calibrate a model with production externalities and financial frictions to understand how environmental concerns and competing objectives shape the reallocation of coal assets during the energy transition.

The third chapter studies the energy and economic costs of data center expansion in the United States. We use project-level data on data center demand to project future growth, and evaluate counterfactual demand shocks in 2028 and 2035 using a quantitative multi-region model. Data center growth raises aggregate electricity demand and increases wholesale prices, particularly in highly exposed regions. Investment responses that expand local generation capacity require large capital expenditures, and differences in the new generation mix drive climate costs.