Evaluating the Effectiveness of Ten Years of Renewable Energy Siting Guidance in Colorado

Abstract

Rapid deployment of utility-scale solar is essential for decarbonizing the electricity sector, but the resulting land-use competition, often called "energy sprawl," creates conflicts with agricultural, environmental, and community interests. The Nature Conservancy's Site Renewables Right (SRR) tool was introduced in 2019 to help developers avoid these conflicts by classifying land according to conservation sensitivity. TNC seeks further empirical evidence to assess whether SRR has influenced solar siting since the tool’s introduction. This study fills that gap by analyzing utility-scale solar siting in Colorado from 2014 to 2024 using a difference-in-differences framework applied to a grid-cell panel dataset. We find that after 2019, SRR-designated grid cells were significantly less likely to host solar development than non-designated cells, and this effect grew steadily over time. These findings provide TNC with a replicable framework for evaluating its effectiveness in other states.