Research

Critical mineral extraction is essential to manufacturing electric vehicles (EVs) and decarbonization. To address supply chain vulnerabilities, U.S. policy is encouraging domestic critical mineral mining by proposing and fast-tracking new mines in states with mineral reserves. This creates unequal geographic exposure to social and environmental mining harms across states and shapes preferences for EVs. Consequently, policies that onshore mining without addressing its harms risk dampening EV demand and impeding the energy transition. However, while prior studies have shown consumer preferences for avoiding such mines and their harms in traditional mineral-producing Southern Hemisphere’ countries, such preferences in countries now turning to mining, such as the U.S., remain unexplored.

To address this gap, we examine if U.S. EV consumers exhibit a ‘NIMBY’ preference for mining-related harms. We also exploit state-level variation in mining activity and policy to study whether these preferences vary and collect stated-preference survey data from 791 U.S. individuals who recently purchased or leased an EV.

Using a mixed logit and a latent class model, we estimate how vehicle and mining process features impact consumer decisions. Leveraging consumer awareness from our treatment and respondent location data, we test for a NIMBY effect. As federal involvement in regulating mining declines and states develop their own policies, this empirical evidence provides timely insights into the multi-system implications such policies may have for broader clean energy trajectories.

Coal power has rapidly declined in the US, dropping from 45% to 19% of electricity generation over 2010–2022. While this rapid transition is critical for decarbonization, it has devastating economic consequences for coal-dependent communities. Policymakers in numerous states are now grappling with how to provide support for transition-impacted communities. This study traces the process of just transition policymaking in five coal-producing states: Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico, and Utah. We use process tracing methods and policy process theory to identify key factors in policymaking, specifically related to policy windows, policy entrepreneurs, and policy feedback. We find considerable variation across states in both policy processes and outcomes, reflecting a period of policy innovation and experimentation among early adopters. Yet we also find broad patterns with party control: Democrat-led states included transition funding as part of comprehensive legislative packages on climate and clean energy, while Republican-led states had smaller, standalone programs through more idiosyncratic policy processes. Overall, the increasingly cooperative stance of some utilities and the diverse coalition of support signals an important shift in the political economy of energy transitions. (DOI)

Policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions are an important component of the energy transition. Residential solar adoption allows for decreasing such emissions from the energy sector while generating benefits to adopting households. However, vulnerable communities might not be able to access benefits from residential solar due to physical and financial barriers to adoption of these technologies. Solar incentive policies targeting low income households have been adopted in several states to address these potential equity issues. This paper uses a difference-in-differences approach to examine the effects of one such policy, New York State’s Affordable Solar program from 2010 to 2021. Our approach finds that the incentive itself does not increase solar adoption in low-income census tracts. We also find small increases in adoption among census tracts with high shares of minority populations suggesting heterogeneous effects among different demographic groups. Combining these results with a follow-up survey of New York solar installers, we provide evidence of some of the potential barriers limiting the impact of the Affordable Solar program. We use these findings to provide insights for other policies aimed at improving equitable access to solar energy. (DOI)

Addressing complex societal challenges like sustainability and justice requires significant coordinated action within and across organizations. But existing theories for understanding organizational change generally focus on change within a single organization. This perspective misses important interconnectivity and dependencies that organizations have with other entities that both facilitate and impede organizational change. We explore these critical interconnectivities and dependencies and propose an Organizational Ecosystem Change Model (OECM) that considers how organizational change occurs within an ecosystem of organizations. We illustrate the relevance of this model by applying it to an organization’s attempt to change in response to complex sustainability challenges that require the federal ecosystem of organizations to incorporate energy and environmental justice values into their work. Through interviews and analyzing official agency documents and internal archival documents with OECM, we demonstrate that organization change is (1) affected by the nature of hierarchy within the ecosystem, (2) requires significant coordination across the ecosystem, and (3) warrants codifying new organizational norms and processes that can create ecosystem-wide support for change. OECM model and our empirical application advance our understanding of organizational change theory and offer practical insights for organizational ecosystems dealing with similar change-related tasks to address complex sustainability challenges. (DOI)

If the U.S. federal government is going to successfully advance the causes of energy and environmental justice (EEJ) as recent policy has pushed for, how might federal programs and investments be assessed through the lens of these values beyond standard econometric ones? Federal agencies like the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) play a significant role in setting long-term strategies and investments for energy technologies, but they generally use technocentric approaches and metrics, such as reductions in levelized cost of energy, to evaluate success. Understanding strategies and investments across a portfolio through the lens of EEJ requires novel approaches. We deploy a first-of-its-kind public value mapping focused how past programs in the DOE Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) align with EEJ. By analyzing several thousand pages of congressional statutes, documented administration policies and executive orders, agency and office reports and publications, and semi-structured interviews of DOE staff and project collaborators, we focus on evaluating research, development, deployment, and commercialization activities promoting legacy (hydropower) and emerging (marine hydrokinetic) renewable energy technologies through the lens of EEJ. Our results provide a baseline according to which future programmatic efforts promoting EEJ in WPTO, DOE as a whole, and beyond can be compared. Our work provides a foundation for tools and processes that can be embedded into day-to-day staff actions that can guide federal investments related to EEJ and push for a more just and sustainable future. (DOI)