The political economy of renewable portfolio standards in the United States

Abstract

We investigate the political economy of Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) adoption, the most commonly used policy tool by U.S. states to curb greenhouse gas emissions. A growing body of research examines the drivers of RPS adoption, but this work has given scant attention to the ways in which the fossil fuel industry potentially moderates the effects of the other drivers of adoption. Therefore, we use discrete-time logistic regression analysis to estimate models of RPS adoption that include an interaction between fossil fuel production levels, and a commonly observed driver of adoption — state government ideology. We find that conservative, moderate, and liberal state governments are likely to adopt an RPS in states with no fossil fuel production. However, only moderate and liberal governments are likely to adopt in major fossil fuel producing states.