How the Nationalization of Climate Politics Polarized State-Level Renewable Energy Policymaking

• In Event: State-Level Dynamics in Energy Governance in the United States

Abstract

Prior to the Biden Administration, climate and renewable energy policymaking took place almost exclusively at the state level. A voluminous literature on state-level climate and renewable energy policy points to partisanship as a major factor -- if not the single-most-significant factor -- in policy adoption and diffusion, with Republican-led states rejecting such policies and Democrat-led states adopting them. However, in this paper I use qualitative case studies of two and a half decades of renewable portfolio standards (RPS) policymaking in seven states to show that Republican state legislators and the appointees of Republican governors were actually a driving force behind the initial adoption of these policies, prior to 2010. In addition, the restructuring of the electric utility sector in some states – a largely non-partisan exercise – was far more important in creating favorable interest group politics conditions for RPS adoption than which party controlled state government. Subsequently, and in conjunction with the emergence of the Tea Party as a major force in Republican politics, state-level renewable energy politics and policymaking became polarized, with Republican state legislators and gubernatorial appointees experiencing greater pressure to fall in line with national party positions that were openly hostile to renewable energy. This story is consistent with findings from Grumbach’s book, Laboratories Against Democracy, but my rich dataset consisting of 219 “policy-focused” interviews with former state policymakers and more than 16,000 pages of archival material reveals novel insights about the mechanisms undergirding this process in the case of climate and renewable energy policy specifically, and also intervenes in the literature on state-level climate policy diffusion by highlighting the factors that attracted Republican politicians to this issue prior to 2010, having everything to do with the nature of utility regulation.

Author

• Joshua Basseches, Tulane University
  Presenting Author