What drives climate policy adoption in the U.S. states?

Samuel Trachtman

Energy Policy, 2020, vol. 138, issue C

Abstract: Climate advocates increasingly view state policy as a crucial tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. However, the literature lacks systematic empirical analysis of which, when, and why states adopt policies mitigating climate change. While traditional climate federalism highlights the co-benefits to climate policies in driving subnational policy decisions, more recent work emphasizes the powerful role of partisan control of office. I collect and analyze panel data measuring the strength of state policy from 2007 to 2014 in four areas: renewable portfolio standards, distributed generation, energy efficiency, and severance taxes on oil and gas extraction. While renewable portfolio standards and distributed generation policies were driven primarily by Democratic partisanship in state electorates, energy efficiency policies were less responsive to Democratic partisanship but marginally responsive to unified Democratic control of state government. Finally, these political factors did not measurably influence state severance taxes.

Keywords: Climate; Subnational; State policy; Renewable (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421519307967
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:138:y:2020:i:c:s0301421519307967

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2019.111214

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().