Assessing potential for policy feedback from renewable energy incentive programs

In Assessing potential for policy feedback from renewable energy incentive programs, Fedor Dokshin proposes a framework for analyzing policy feedback’s effectiveness by looking at factors such as the volume of beneficiaries and their partisan make-up. He then applies this framework to an incentive program that supported the installation of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in households across New York state. Dokshin finds that Republican-led districts, which could be decisive for future energy transition policy, have more PV incentive beneficiaries, suggesting a strong pro-solar constituency, but beneficiaries skew Democratic, raising concerns about the direction of policy feedback.

Fedor Dokshin is a sociology professor at the University of Toronto and CGSP affiliate faculty member. His research and teaching interests are in environmental sociology, political sociology, organizations, social networks, and computational social science.

Citation

Dokshin, F.A. Assessing potential for policy feedback from renewable energy incentive programs. npj Clim. Action 3, 83 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-024-00164-8

Abstract

Climate advocates look optimistically to policy feedback as a mechanism for locking-in a decarbonization policy trajectory, but little research has examined whether and how climate legislation creates constituencies that could provide future political support. This article focuses on incentive programs supporting investment in solar PV and the potential for policy feedback through participating households. We first develop a framework of feedback potential that considers the volume and partisanship of incentive program beneficiaries and their distribution across electoral districts. We then apply the framework to New York State’s solar PV incentive program, which enabled over 140,000 households to install solar PV. We find that the number of solar PV incentive beneficiaries is positively associated with Republican vote share, suggesting potential for a strong pro-solar constituency in the pivotal, Republican-led districts. Within electoral districts, however, beneficiaries skew Democratic, raising questions about the direction of policy feedback. The results carry implications for the kind of politics that incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act may set in motion in the coming years.