IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v148y2021ipas0301421520306601.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Renewable energy requirements on the ballot: An analysis of county-level voting results

Author

Listed:
  • Pritchard, Zachary D.
  • Mills, Sarah

Abstract

National polling data consistently find a large, bipartisan group of Americans support state renewable portfolio standards (RPS), policies which mandate generation of electricity from renewable sources. However, when such policies are actually put before voters on the ballot, they have been met with mixed success: out of seven RPS ballot initiatives, only four have been approved. From a newly compiled dataset of county-level voting results, we use ordinary least-squares regression to investigate the determinants of public support for RPS ballot proposals. Two models are constructed based on literature related to legislative adoption of RPS and, separately, public support of pro-renewable policies. Consistent with previous studies, political, economic, and demographic variables are found to be significant in predicting voter behavior. State-level fixed effects, however, are the largest contributors to both models. A synthesis model, combining elements from both the legislative adoption and public acceptance literatures, performs best when fixed effects are removed. As climate advocates increasingly call for policies to more quickly transition the electricity sector to renewable energy sources, this research provides greater insight into the prospects of successfully achieving that aim through a ballot initiative. It also, however, reveals insights applicable to legislature-driven RPS policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Pritchard, Zachary D. & Mills, Sarah, 2021. "Renewable energy requirements on the ballot: An analysis of county-level voting results," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 148(PA).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:148:y:2021:i:pa:s0301421520306601
    DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2020.111949
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421520306601
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.enpol.2020.111949?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Huang, Ming-Yuan & Alavalapati, Janaki R.R. & Carter, Douglas R. & Langholtz, Matthew H., 2007. "Is the choice of renewable portfolio standards random?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(11), pages 5571-5575, November.
    2. Oerlemans, Leon A.G. & Chan, Kai-Ying & Volschenk, Jako, 2016. "Willingness to pay for green electricity: A review of the contingent valuation literature and its sources of error," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 875-885.
    3. Hertel-Fernandez, Alexander & Mildenberger, Matto & Stokes, Leah C., 2019. "Legislative Staff and Representation in Congress," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 113(1), pages 1-18, February.
    4. Vossler, Christian A. & Kerkvliet, Joe, 2003. "A criterion validity test of the contingent valuation method: comparing hypothetical and actual voting behavior for a public referendum," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 631-649, May.
    5. Philippe Thalmann, 2004. "The Public Acceptance of Green Taxes: 2 Million Voters Express Their Opinion," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 119(1_2), pages 179-217, April.
    6. Hongtao Yi & Richard C. Feiock, 2012. "Policy Tool Interactions and the Adoption of State Renewable Portfolio Standards," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 29(2), pages 193-206, March.
    7. Coley, Jonathan S. & Hess, David J., 2012. "Green energy laws and Republican legislators in the United States," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 576-583.
    8. Thomas P. Lyon & Haitao Yin, 2010. "Why Do States Adopt Renewable Portfolio Standards?: An Empirical Investigation," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3), pages 133-158.
    9. Upton, Gregory B. & Snyder, Brian F., 2015. "Renewable energy potential and adoption of renewable portfolio standards," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 67-70.
    10. Sundt, Swantje & Rehdanz, Katrin, 2015. "Consumers' willingness to pay for green electricity: A meta-analysis of the literature," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 1-8.
    11. Daniel C. Matisoff, 2008. "The Adoption of State Climate Change Policies and Renewable Portfolio Standards: Regional Diffusion or Internal Determinants?," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 25(6), pages 527-546, December.
    12. Stefano Carattini & Andrea Baranzini & Philippe Thalmann & Frédéric Varone & Frank Vöhringer, 2017. "Green Taxes in a Post-Paris World: Are Millions of Nays Inevitable?," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 68(1), pages 97-128, September.
    13. Delmas, Magali A. & Montes-Sancho, Maria J., 2011. "U.S. state policies for renewable energy: Context and effectiveness," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 2273-2288, May.
    14. Steffen Jenner, Gabriel Chan, Rolf Frankenberger, and Mathias Gabel, 2012. "What Drives States to Support Renewable Energy?," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2).
    15. Chandler, Jess, 2009. "Trendy solutions: Why do states adopt Sustainable Energy Portfolio Standards?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 3274-3281, August.
    16. Sanya Carley & Lincoln L. Davies & David B. Spence & Nikolaos Zirogiannis, 2018. "Empirical evaluation of the stringency and design of renewable portfolio standards," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 3(9), pages 754-763, September.
    17. Dermont, Clau & Ingold, Karin & Kammermann, Lorenz & Stadelmann-Steffen, Isabelle, 2017. "Bringing the policy making perspective in: A political science approach to social acceptance," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 359-368.
    18. Barry G. Rabe & Sarah B. Mills, 2017. "State energy policy in the Trump Era: insights from public opinion," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 7(4), pages 535-539, December.
    19. Maria A. Petrova, 2013. "NIMBYism revisited: public acceptance of wind energy in the United States," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 4(6), pages 575-601, November.
    20. Hertel-Fernandez, Alexander & Mildenberger, Matto & Stokes, Leah C., 2019. "Legislative Staff and Representation in Congress – ERRATUM," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 113(2), pages 621-621, May.
    21. Ma, Chunbo & Rogers, Abbie A. & Kragt, Marit E. & Zhang, Fan & Polyakov, Maksym & Gibson, Fiona & Chalak, Morteza & Pandit, Ram & Tapsuwan, Sorada, 2015. "Consumers’ willingness to pay for renewable energy: A meta-regression analysis," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 93-109.
    22. Adanu, Kwami & Hoehn, John P. & Norris, Patricia & Iglesias, Emma, 2012. "Voter decisions on eminent domain and police power reforms," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 187-194.
    23. Peter D. Howe & Matto Mildenberger & Jennifer R. Marlon & Anthony Leiserowitz, 2015. "Geographic variation in opinions on climate change at state and local scales in the USA," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 5(6), pages 596-603, June.
    24. Thomas P. Lyon, 2016. "Drivers and Impacts of Renewable Portfolio Standards," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 8(1), pages 141-155, October.
    25. Bornstein, Nicholas & Lanz, Bruno, 2008. "Voting on the environment: Price or ideology? Evidence from Swiss referendums," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 430-440, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sojin Jang & Hongtao Yi, 2022. "Organized elite power and clean energy: A study of negative policy experimentations with renewable portfolio standards," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 39(1), pages 8-31, January.
    2. Don Fullerton & Chi L. Ta, 2022. "What Determines Effectiveness of Renewable Energy Standards? General Equilibrium Analytical Model and Empirical Analysis," CESifo Working Paper Series 9565, CESifo.
    3. Daniel J Pastor, 2020. "The effects of renewables portfolio standards on renewable energy generation," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 40(3), pages 2121-2133.
    4. Rountree, Valerie, 2019. "Nevada's experience with the Renewable Portfolio Standard," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 279-291.
    5. Upton, Gregory B. & Snyder, Brian F., 2015. "Renewable energy potential and adoption of renewable portfolio standards," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 67-70.
    6. Yi, Hongtao, 2015. "Clean-energy policies and electricity sector carbon emissions in the U.S. states," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 19-29.
    7. Armstrong, John H., 2019. "Modeling effective local government climate policies that exceed state targets," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 15-26.
    8. Jenner, Steffen & Groba, Felix & Indvik, Joe, 2013. "Assessing the strength and effectiveness of renewable electricity feed-in tariffs in European Union countries," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 385-401.
    9. Trachtman, Samuel, 2020. "What drives climate policy adoption in the U.S. states?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    10. Baldwin, Elizabeth & Carley, Sanya & Nicholson-Crotty, Sean, 2019. "Why do countries emulate each others’ policies? A global study of renewable energy policy diffusion," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 29-45.
    11. Steffen Jenner & Lotte Ovaere & Stephan Schindele, 2013. "The Impact of Private Interest Contributions on RPS Adoption," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(3), pages 411-423, November.
    12. Upton, Gregory B. & Snyder, Brian F., 2017. "Funding renewable energy: An analysis of renewable portfolio standards," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 205-216.
    13. Timothy Fraser & Lily Cunningham & Amos Nasongo, 2021. "Build Back Better? Effects of Crisis on Climate Change Adaptation Through Solar Power in Japan and the United States," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 21(1), pages 54-75, Winter.
    14. Neal D. Woods, 2021. "The State of State Environmental Policy Research: A Thirty‐Year Progress Report," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 38(3), pages 347-369, May.
    15. Cheng, Quan & Yi, Hongtao, 2017. "Complementarity and substitutability: A review of state level renewable energy policy instrument interactions," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 683-691.
    16. Cherry, Todd L. & Brimley, Peri M. & Longuevan, Joseph D. & Thunström, Linda, 2023. "In-state generation requirements and the acceptability of renewable portfolio standards," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    17. Côme Billard & Anna Creti & Antoine Mandel, 2020. "How Environmental Policies Spread? A Network Approach to Diffusion in the U.S," Working Papers 2020.12, FAERE - French Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.
    18. Lazarus Adua & Brett Clark, 2021. "Politics and Corporate‐Sector Environmentally Significant Actions: The Effects of Political Partisanship on U.S. Utilities Energy Efficiency Policies," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 38(1), pages 31-48, January.
    19. Bae, Hyunhoe & Yu, Sanguk, 2018. "Information and coercive regulation: The impact of fuel mix information disclosure on states’ adoption of renewable energy policy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 151-159.
    20. Lee, Donghyun & Kim, Minki & Lee, Jungyoun, 2016. "Adoption of green electricity policies: Investigating the role of environmental attitudes via big data-driven search-queries," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 187-201.

    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:eee:enepol:v:148:y:2021:i:pa:s0301421520306601. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

    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.