The RAND Corporation today announced that it is revising a study on renewable energy expenditures issued Nov. 13 after learning there were some inadvertent errors in the computer model and numerical assumptions on which the study findings were based.
The study withdrawn for revision is titled "Impacts on U.S. Energy Expenditures of Increasing Renewable Energy Use." It examined total energy expenditures if a requirement was imposed that 25 percent of electricity and motor vehicle fuels used in the United States by 2025 would come from renewable resources.
RAND Vice President Debra Knopman, who is director of the RAND Infrastructure, Safety and Environment division, said the errors "may have an effect on the results of the study, but exactly what that effect will be is uncertain at present. In this instance, the RAND quality assurance process that we use to carefully review our studies failed to detect inadvertent errors in the treatment of existing subsidies for biofuels and the availability of existing hydropower capacity in the computer code, as well as some other details relating to how the renewable requirement is met and at what cost."
"We deeply regret these inadvertent errors, accept responsibility for them, and are announcing them to set the record straight," Knopman said. "We will redo our analysis and issue a corrected version of the report in early 2007."
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