LAPSE:2019.0315
Published Article
LAPSE:2019.0315
American’s Energy Future: An Analysis of the Proposed Energy Policy Plans in Presidential Election
Ming-Hsun Cheng, Minliang Yang, Yu Wang
February 27, 2019
As the leader of the largest economy, President of the United States has substantive influence on addressing climate change problems. However, a presidential election is often dominated by issues other than energy problems. This paper focuses on the 2016 presidential election, and examines the energy plans proposed by the leading Democrat and Republican candidates. Our data from the Iowa caucus survey in January 2016 suggests that voters were more concerned about terrorism and economic issues than environmental issues. We then compare the Democratic and Republican candidate’s view of America’s energy future, and evaluate their proposed renewable energy targets. We find that the view on renewable energy is polarized between Democratic and Republican candidates, while candidates from both parties agree on the need for energy efficiency. Results from our ordinal least squares regression models suggests that Democratic candidates have moderate to ambitious goals for developing solar and other renewables. The Republican candidates favor fossil fuels and they choose not to provide any specific target for developing renewable energy. In addition, this trend of party polarization has grown more significant when compared with the past three presidential elections. Our observation suggests that energy policies need to be discussed more often regarding the diversification and decarbonization of the nation’s energy system.
Keywords
energy future, party polarization, president election, public opinion, Renewable and Sustainable Energy
Suggested Citation
Cheng MH, Yang M, Wang Y. American’s Energy Future: An Analysis of the Proposed Energy Policy Plans in Presidential Election. (2019). LAPSE:2019.0315
Author Affiliations
Cheng MH: Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50010, USA [ORCID]
Yang M: Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50010, USA
Wang Y: Department of Political Science, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50010, USA
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Journal Name
Energies
Volume
9
Issue
12
Article Number
E1000
Year
2016
Publication Date
2016-11-30
Published Version
ISSN
1996-1073
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Original Submission
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PII: en9121000, Publication Type: Journal Article
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LAPSE:2019.0315
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doi:10.3390/en9121000
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Feb 27, 2019
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CC BY 4.0
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Feb 27, 2019
 
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Feb 27, 2019
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Original Submitter
Calvin Tsay
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