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/ . o C)1 -..J w::.. Executive Summary This report describes the methodology and results of research aimed at projecting the economic impact of emerging energy technology (EET) development in the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB, see Fig. S-l). A computer model which captures the direct, indirect and induced dependencies of the Basin economy in economic equilibrium was employed for this task. This model, the UCRB Optimi- zation Model, was run under economic conditions estimates to have prevailed in 1975 and conditions projected for 2000 without synfuel development. This pro- vided a picture of how the UCRB economy looks today and how it might look in , 2000 if there were no EET or synfuel development. Two synfuel development scenarios were then assumed for the year 2000. These scenarios, referred to as the "baseline" and "accelerated" synfuel sce- narios, call for the UCRB to produce oil from shale and high and low Btu gas from coal. By adding this synfuel activity to the original model inputs for 2000 and running the model, one obtains a projection of what the UCRB economy would look like if the synfuel scenarios were actually fulfilled. The differ- ences among these model results and the earlier model runs without synfuel development provide a basis for calculating the absolute and relative changes in the economy which would be due to synfuels development. ~egate Impacts The measure of economic activity used to measure the aggregate economic impact was personal income. The effect of non-synfuels development on Basin '... personal income is presented in Fig. 8-2. It shows that the model projects a 164% increase in Basin personal income over the period 1975-2000 even in the absence of synfuels development: from 1.4 to 3.6 billion dollars.