Abstract
BackgroundIn this paper, we try to shed light on the question whether natural disasters, such as nuclear accidents, have an impact on policy makers’ activity in passing new green energy policies. Disruptive moments like exogenous shocks reinforce society’s disapproval against polluting technologies and should open a window of opportunities to eventually initiate a change toward green energy.MethodsBased on the data of 34 OECD countries, we disentangle the effect of disruptive exogenous shocks on countries’ policy activity. Starting with OLS regressions, we run several robustness checks by using a pre-sample mean approach, an ARDL technique called dynamic heterogeneous panel models (DHPM), which allows for the distinction between long- and short-run effects.ResultsThe results corroborate the hypothesis that unexpected, disruptive events have a positive impact on the actual number of renewable energy policies. The fade-out time for shocks is about 7 years, leaving a positive long-term effect.ConclusionExogenous events such as nuclear disasters act as “focusing event” and seem to offer policy makers a window of opportunities to initiate conducive policy measures toward a cleaner economy. Furthermore, a country’s capacity in green technologies is key to a pervasive diffusion of green technologies.
Highlights
The dangers of climate change have long been known
Model 1 in Table 2 regresses renewable energy policies (REP) on the three dummy variables: Chernobyl, Ibaraki, and Fukushima, which represent the starting point of the periods after the respective nuclear disaster
The length of effectiveness of a shock, we identify via Dynamic Heterogeneous Panel Models (DHPM)
Summary
The dangers of climate change have long been known. Global warming along with a rising sea level increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather events [1,2,3] threaten our livelihood. Birkland [49] distinguishes three categories: (1) normal events which can be expected to happen but are unpredictable such as earthquakes, hurricanes, or nuclear disasters; (2) new events which refer to unprecedented events as induced by technological change, or the usage of new products; and (3) common events under uncommon circumstances This type of events refers to events which occur on a regular basis but cannot be predicted where and when it happens. As Nohrstedt and Weible [51] point out, the emerging crisis becomes a focusing event, which has political actors focus on the issue and become aware of the potential consequences of such accident. This moment opens up an opportunity to come to a democratic consensus and make a change. Such events are frequently considered causal drivers for major or nonincremental policy changes
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