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Net Present Value of Benefits 1996 (NPV96):

Most Conservative Outcome: $844,500,000

Ranges for Other Infratechnology Impact Assessments: $3,500,000 - $773,000,000

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Net Present Value of Benefits 2017 (NPV17):

Extrapolated Outcome: $8,772,000,000

Economy Wide Extrapolated Outcome: $250,473,200,000

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Benefit to Cost Ratio (B/C):

Most Conservative Outcome: 29/1

Ranges for Other Infratechnology Impact Assessments: 3‐113/1

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Table ES-1. Economic Impact of the AES program, 1996-2017

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Table ES-1 summarizes the quantitative findings of this economic impact analysis in
terms of Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), Alternative Internal
Rate of Return (AIRR), and Benefit-to-Cost ratio (B/C). Looking only at the column of
Table ES-1 entitled “Most Conservative Outcome,” based on the information discovered
in the survey conducted for this project, in 1996 NIST AES program managers would
have valued the AES program at $844,500,000, net of costs incurred. By comparison, of
12 other NIST infra-technology projects for which NPV was calculated (1999-2011), the
median net present value was $48.5M, and ranged from $3.5M – $773M.

The same logic applies to the IRR metric, the AIRR metric, and the B/C metric. A
project has an acceptable economic impact if the IRR on the capital invested exceeds the
cost of capital. The Executive Branch Office of Management and Budget stipulates the
Government cost of capital for investment projects like AES to be 7%. Clearly the AES
program’s 81% IRR indicates significant impact. Similarly, a program B/C greater than
one has a sufficient impact to go forward. The AES program’s B/C of 29/1 (the present
value of benefits/present value of costs) indicates that for every $1 of NIST’s investment,
society received $29 dollars’ worth of cost avoidance benefits.

Explanations of the economic impact metrics based on extrapolated estimates (in the third
and fourth column of Table ES-1) are discussed in the following report. Although they
show significant increases in the economic impact for the AES program, they are
nonetheless, as the report explains, lower bound estimates of the true economic impact of
the AES program.

The opening paragraph of this executive summary observes that about $40 billion
annually is used Government-wide to support intramural research. The AES program is
an example of such intramural research. A very small part of that $40 billion—about
$2.7 million—was spent for the AES program in 2017, close to the inflation-adjusted
annual amount ($2.6 million) spent to support the program over the years from 1996
through 2017. Thus, the annual intramural Federal R&D spending for 2017 is almost fifteen thousand times greater than NIST’s annual spending for the AES program. Now
consider the success of the AES program in that context and ask, “What would the annual
return on investment be if the collection of Federally funded intramural R&D investments
were as productive as the AES program?” For simplicity, imagine the expenditure of $40
billion annually had continued indefinitely. The annual yield on that $40 billion would
have to be $72 billion to justify an internal rate of return equal to the AES program’s
80%.