The Role of Public-Private Partnerships in Large-Scale Renewable Energy Projects

Abstract

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) in renewable energy offer an opportunity for the public and private sectors to pool resources and share risks to complete utility-scale projects that would not be feasible otherwise. Though documented in other countries, PPPs are not widely used in the United States to their full potential, as such, research on renewable energy PPPs in the United States is lacking. As attention to PPPs grows with the national interest in renewable energy, determining factors that help predict success of such partnerships—as well as defining what a successful partnership is—becomes important to practitioners in the public and private sectors that are interested in implementing PPPs for future renewable energy projects. Drawing from primary (interviews) and secondary (reports, news articles) sources, this article discusses a comprehensive definition of PPPs in the context of renewable energy, offers a framework for predicting the success of a partnership, and contributes to the evolution of the term “success”.