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This study investigates the renewable energy adoption across regions covered by Independent System Operators (ISOs) in the U.S. The study employed a deterministic model in the form of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to determine the performance of ten ISO regions over a five-year period from 2013 to 2017. Inputs into the model include the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) targets, fossil fuel capacity additions and the costs of capacity additions. Outputs from the model include renewable energy capacity additions and CO2 emissions per MWh of generated electricity. The results show the regions covered by CAISO, ERCOT, NE-ISO, SPP and the NON-ISO to be on the efficient frontier. For the regions not on the efficient frontier, the results identify their limitations and provide projections both for reductions in excess inputs and improvements in outputs to be on the efficient frontier. For example, we see that the regions covered by NY-ISO and PJM would require, on average, renewable energy capacity expansions of 593.65MW and 230.24MW, respectively, to be on the efficient frontier. These regions would require their average fossil capacity expansions to be limited to 234.83MW and 365.4MW respectively. These findings offer some guidance on approaches to improving the performance of these markets. 

To address the effects of climate change, it is imperative for economies to proactively invest in, and deploy, low carbon energy technologies to meet current energy demands. To this effect, several states in the U.S. have implemented policies to incentivize the growth of renewable energy technologies. One of these policies is the renewable portfolio standards (RPS), which mandates that a certain percentage of the total electricity sales of utilities be sourced from renewable energy sources. This paper examines the effectiveness of these policies in driving the growth of specific renewable technologies across different regional transmission organizations (RTOs). It evaluates the adoption of renewable energy technologies across these RTOs to provide insights on the varying successes of these policies. The paper develops a ranking system for the correlations between the strength of RPS and renewable energy capacity growth across the RTOs. Two central observations emerge. First, despite the presence of positive correlations between RPS and renewable energy capacity additions, the capacity growth of renewable energy is not monotonic in time as technological differences characterize regional attributes. Second, the technology returns on RPS mandates are location-specific.