Developing a Comprehensive Benefit-Cost Analysis Framework: the Rhode Island Experience

RI PUC developed a comprehensive Benefit-Cost Analysis Framework to facilitate analysis and comparisons of different types of utility expenditures and investment
The framework factors in a wide range of benefits and costs
The framework is the result of a robust stakeholder process

The Rhode Island PUC is accounting for a wide range of benefits and costs from the power system, customer and societal perspectives to evaluate utility investments and expenditures in this model framework.

Rhode Island, like many other states, is facing the new realities of quickly changing customer demands, advancing technologies and new public policy priorities that are challenging existing regulatory processes. The Rhode Island PUC took steps to meet this challenge by developing a new regulatory tool. Building on the cost-effectiveness approach used for energy efficiency, Rhode Island developed a comprehensive framework to enable comparison of the benefits and costs across different types of utility expenditures and investments on behalf of customers. Download this report to find out how the framework can be adopted and implemented in your state.

In this report:

Why the Rhode Island PUC developed the Benefit-Cost Framework
What the framework considers
What has worked and what needs further development
Recommendations to improve the application of the framework