Advancing bipartisan decarbonization policies: lessons from state-level successes and failures

Abstract

U.S. political polarization is at a high point since the Civil War, and is a significant barrier to coordinated national action addressing climate change. To examine where common ground may exist, here we comprehensively review and characterize successes and failures of recent state-level decarbonization legislation, focusing especially on bipartisanship. We analyze 418 major state-government-enacted bills and 450 failed bills from 2015 to 2020, as well as the political contexts in which they were passed or defeated. We use bivariate analyses and regressions to explore correlations and partial correlations between the policy characteristics and political contexts of bills, and their passage or failure, their bipartisanship, and vote shares they received. Key results include (i) nearly one-third of these state-level decarbonization bills were passed by Republican-controlled governments. (ii) Bipartisan or Republican co-sponsors disproportionately passed financial incentives for renewable energy, and legislation that expands consumer or business choices in context of decarbonization goals; Democrat-only co-sponsors disproportionately passed bills that restricted consumer and business choice, such as mandatory Renewable Energy and Efficiency Portfolio Standards (REEPS) and emissions standards. (iii) Bipartisan bills were disproportionately proposed in “divided” states, did not restrict consumer and business choice, had environmental justice components framed economically, and lacked environmental justice components framed either using academic social-justice jargon or non-neutrally with respect to immutable characteristics such as race. (iv) Bills that expand consumer or business choice were disproportionately enacted. Though climate change is a polarized issue, our results provide tangible insights for future bipartisan successes. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10584-022-03335-w.

Pursuing decarbonization along with national security: Assessing public support for the Thacker Pass lithium mine

“…Marshall and Burges (2022) find that Republican-controlled states enacted about one-third of state-level renewable energy legislation [ 75 ]. Texas, a conservative state, is the national leader in creating wind energy capacity.…”

Renewable Portfolio Standards

“…RPS policies represent the most comprehensive and longstanding attempt by governments in the United States, at any level, to promote renewable energy use. And their popularity has been growing across the political spectrum, in the US and internationally (Marshall and Burgess, 2022;Rhodes et al, 2021).…”

US Partisan Polarization on Climate Change: Can Stalemate Give Way to Opportunity?

“…Although recent climate policy making in the states has not followed the same strict partisan lines as at the federal level, the most ambitious policies nevertheless have received little if any Republican backing (Marshall and Burgess 2022). Moreover, political leaders in many Republican-dominated states have enacted policies explicitly intended to stall the clean-energy transition (Basseches et al 2022).…”