[published] Good Energy Collective (GEC) CEA, 2022-11-07

	A	B	C	D	E
1	Notes: As a rough plausibility check, we developed a cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) to estimate the costs and impacts of Good Energy Collective's prior work on advocating for a lifted ban on nuclear energy in West Virginia. Focusing this CEA on GEC’s West Virginia advocacy is likely not generalizable to GEC’s overall cost-effectiveness. Namely, this model focuses on the near-term effect of advanced reactors in West Virginia, and ignores the longer-term effects of market-building, scaling, and technological progress. We believe GEC’s real effect would be much higher than what we model in our CEA, which primarily serves as a high-level sense-check of whether GEC’s efforts might be highly cost-effective. We chose to develop a more specific CEA because we think a CEA of GEC, overall, would include too many highly subjective guess parameters to have any confidence in its results. Please see our deep dive for commentary on our analysis. A Guesstimate analysis is linked here. Last updated 2023-01-26.
2		Parameter (best guess)	Parameter (pessimistic)	Parameter (optimistic)	Notes

3	Cost
4	GEC budget, 2022	$775,000	$775,000	$775,000	Input
5	% of GEC budget spent on policy advocacy	25%	25%	25%	Input
6	% of GEC policy budget spent on state policy	50%	50%	50%	Guess
7	% of GEC budget spent on lifting the West Virginia ban	13%	13%	13%	Calculation
8	Amount GEC spent on lifting the West Virginia ban	$96,875	$96,875	$96,875	Calculation
9	Effectiveness
10	# of coal-fired plants retired in the last 10 years in West Virginia	6	6	6	Input
11	# of coal-fired plants retired in the last 10 years in Southeast US	50	50	50	Input
12	# of recently retired coal-fired sites amenable to advanced reactor siting in Southeast US	11	11	11	Input
13	# recently retired coal-fired plants amenable to advanced reactor siting in West Virginia	1.3	1.3	1.3	Calculation
14	Electric power output by an advanced reactor (MWe)	924	924	924	Input
15	Electric power output by coal-to-nuclear advanced reactor sites in West Virginia (MWe)	1,220	1,220	1,220	Calculation
16	Capacity factor for nuclear power plant	90%	90%	90%	Input
17	Annual electricity generated by advanced reactor (MWh)	9,615,957	9,615,957	9,615,957	Calculation
18	Emission intensity in West Virginia, 2020 (lbs/MWh)	1,923	1,923	1,923	Input
19	Avoided emissions by coal-to-nuclear advanced reactor sites in West Virginia (tCO2)	8,387,607	8,387,607	8,387,607	Calculation
20	# of years that policy advocacy pushed the lifted ban forward during the given time period	1.0	0.5	2.0	Guess
21	% change in probability of the ban being lifted due to policy advocacy during the given time period	5%	3%	10%	Guess
22	% contribution of GEC to advocacy for the ban being lifted	6.67%	6.67%	6.67%	Guess
23	tCO2e avoided due to GEC	27,959	6,990	111,835	Calculation
24	Cost-effectiveness
25	$ per tCO2e	$3.46	$14	$0.87	Calculation
26	Carbon offset benchmark $ per tCO2e	$17	$17	$17	Input
27	...is x times as cost-effective as offset benchmark	5	1	19	Calculation
28	Top recommendation benchmark $ per tCO2e	$1	$1	$1	Input
29	...is x times as cost-effective as top recommendation benchmark	0.3	0.1	1.2	Calculation
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100