Public Attitudes Toward Construction of New Power Plants

Abstract

Increased demand for U.S. electricity generation will require the construction of hundreds of new power plants in the coming decades. We examine attitudinal data from the 2008 MIT Energy Survey to mea- sure public support for and opposition to the local siting of power plants. Substantial majorities of Americans oppose the location of coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants in their area, although a majority supports local siting of wind facilities. We find that attitudes about plant siting depend heavily on perceptions of the environmental harm and costs of specific facilities; the effects of these attributes are similar across differ- ent types of fuel sources, suggesting that there is a common underlying structure to an individual's attitude. That is, people view all power sources in the same framework and differentiate them on perceived endowments, the most important of which is environmental harm. Expansion of electric power generation over the coming decades presents a major political challenge for the United States. The U.S. Energy Information Agency projects a 40 percent rise in electricity demand over the next 30 years. To meet rising demand with the current mix of energy sources will require ap- proximately 230 new coal-fired power plants, 160 wind farms, and 10 nuclear power facilities (U.S. EIA 2007). 1 Given the inefficiency of electricity trans- mission, most of these facilities will need to be located near population centers, raising the prospects that local opposition to such facilities may significantly delay or even prevent the development of sufficient numbers of power plants to