IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jnlpup/v36y2016i02p251-275_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Electric utilities and American climate policy: lobbying by expected winners and losers

Author

Listed:
  • Kim, Sung Eun
  • Urpelainen, Johannes
  • Yang, Joonseok

Abstract

When and why do individual companies lobby on environmental policies? Given the structural strength of business interests, the answer to this question is important for explaining policy. However, evidence on the strategic lobbying behaviour of individual companies remains scarce. We use data from lobbying disclosure reports on all major climate bills introduced during the 111th Congress (2009–2010). We then link the lobbying disclosure reports to detailed data on the fuel choices of all electric utilities in the United States along with socioeconomic, institutional and political data from the states where the utilities operate. The expected winners (renewable energy, natural gas users) from climate policy are much more likely to lobby individually on federal legislation than the expected losers (coal users). We find that expected winners lobby for specific provisions and rents as a private good, whereas expected losers concentrate their efforts on collective action through trade associations and committees to prevent climate legislation. The results suggest that the supporters of climate policy believed the probability of federal climate legislation to be nontrivial.

Suggested Citation

  • Kim, Sung Eun & Urpelainen, Johannes & Yang, Joonseok, 2016. "Electric utilities and American climate policy: lobbying by expected winners and losers," Journal of Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 36(2), pages 251-275, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:jnlpup:v:36:y:2016:i:02:p:251-275_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0143814X15000033/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Roman Stutzer & Adrian Rinscheid & Thiago D. Oliveira & Pedro Mendes Loureiro & Aya Kachi & Mert Duygan, 2021. "Black coal, thin ice: the discursive legitimisation of Australian coal in the age of climate change," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-9, December.
    2. Christian Downie, 2017. "Fighting for King Coal’s Crown: Business Actors in the US Coal and Utility Industries," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 17(1), pages 21-39, February.
    3. Brucal, Arlan & Tarui, Nori, 2021. "The effects of utility revenue decoupling on electricity prices," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    4. Federica Genovese & Endre Tvinnereim, 2019. "Who opposes climate regulation? Business preferences for the European emission trading scheme," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 511-542, September.
    5. Jared Cory & Michael Lerner & Iain Osgood, 2021. "Supply Chain Linkages and the Extended Carbon Coalition," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 65(1), pages 69-87, January.
    6. Robert Brulle & Christian Downie, 2022. "Following the money: trade associations, political activity and climate change," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 175(3), pages 1-19, December.
    7. Réka Juhász & Nathan Lane, 2024. "The Political Economy of Industrial Policy," CESifo Working Paper Series 11143, CESifo.
    8. Maxwell Boykoff, 2024. "Climate change countermovements and adaptive strategies: insights from Heartland Institute annual conferences a decade apart," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 177(1), pages 1-17, January.
    9. Richard Bärnthaler & Andreas Novy & Lea Arzberger & Astrid Krisch & Hans Volmary, 2024. "The power to transform structures: power complexes and the challenges for realising a wellbeing economy," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-16, December.
    10. Cristian Pons-Seres de Brauwer, 2022. "The Politics of Market Change towards Sustainability: Revisiting Germany’s Policy Support Framework for Renewables," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(11), pages 1-27, May.
    11. Robert J. Brulle, 2018. "The climate lobby: a sectoral analysis of lobbying spending on climate change in the USA, 2000 to 2016," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 149(3), pages 289-303, August.
    12. Adrian Rinscheid, 2020. "Business Power in Noisy Politics: An Exploration Based on Discourse Network Analysis and Survey Data," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(2), pages 286-297.
    13. Kalkuhl, Matthias & Steckel, Jan Christoph & Edenhofer, Ottmar, 2020. "All or nothing: Climate policy when assets can become stranded," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    14. Olimpia Cutinelli Rendina & Sonja Dobkowitz & Antoine Mayerowitz, 2024. "Environmentally-Responsible Demand: Irresponsible Lobbying? ," Post-Print hal-04502992, HAL.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jnlpup:v:36:y:2016:i:02:p:251-275_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/pup .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.