scholarly journals Public support for supply-focused transport policies: Vehicle emissions, low-carbon fuels, and ZEV sales standards in Canada and California

2020 ◽  
Vol 141 ◽  
pp. 98-115
Author(s):  
Zoe Long ◽  
Jonn Axsen ◽  
Shelby Kitt
Keyword(s):  
Vehicle Emissions ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Low Carbon

scholarly journals Can policy-packaging increase public support for costly policies? Insights from a choice experiment on policies against vehicle emissions

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 599-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Wicki ◽  
Robert Alexander Huber ◽  
Thomas Bernauer
Keyword(s):  
Choice Experiment ◽  
Vehicle Emissions ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Command And Control ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Low Visibility ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Empirical Analysis

AbstractPublic support is usually a precondition for the adoption and successful implementation of costly policies. We argue that such support is easier to achieve with policy-packages that incorporate primary and ancillary measures. We specifically distinguish command-and-control and market-based measures as primary measures and argue that the former will usually garner more public support than the latter given the low-visibility tendency of costs associated with command-and-control measures. Nevertheless, if included in a policy-package, ancillary measures are likely to increase public support by reducing negative effects of primary measures. Based on a choice experiment with a representative sample of 2,034 Swiss citizens, we assessed these arguments with respect to political efforts to reduce vehicle emissions. The empirical analysis supported the argument that policy-packaging affects public support positively, particularly generating more support when ancillary measures are added. Lastly, we ultimately observe that command-and-control measures obtain more public support than market-based instruments.

scholarly journals The Good, the Bad and the Uncertain: Bioenergy use in the European Union

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Philippidis ◽  
Heleen Bartelings ◽  
John Helming ◽  
Robert M'barek ◽  
Edward Smeets ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Computable General Equilibrium ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Computable General Equilibrium Model ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Advanced Biofuels ◽  
Low Carbon Economy ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
The Impact

As the EU is moving towards a low carbon economy and seeks to further develop its renewable energy policy, this paper quantitatively investigates the impact of plausible energy market reforms from the perspective of bio-renewables. Employing a state-of-the-art biobased variant of a computable general equilibrium model, this study assesses the perceived medium-term benefits, risks and trade-offs which arise from an advanced biofuels plan, two exploratory scenarios of a more 'sustainable' conventional biofuels plan and a 'no-mandate' scenario. Consistent with more recent studies, none of the scenarios considered present significant challenges to EU food-security or agricultural land usage. An illustrative advanced biofuels plan simulation requires non-trivial public support to implement whilst a degree of competition for biomass with (high-value) advanced biomass material industries is observed. On the other hand, it significantly alleviates land use pressures, whilst lignocellulose biomass prices are not expected to increase to unsustainable levels. Clearly, these observations are subject to assumptions on technological change, sustainable biomass limits, expected trends in fossil fuel prices and EU access to third-country trade. With these same caveats in mind, the switch to increased bioethanol production does not result in significant market tensions in biomass markets.

scholarly journals Creating energy citizenship through material participation

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marianne Ryghaug ◽  
Tomas Moe Skjølsvold ◽  
Sara Heidenreich
Keyword(s):  
Public Support ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Energy Technologies ◽  
Electric Car ◽  
Energy Transitions ◽  
New Energy ◽  
New Material ◽  
Knowledge Deficits ◽  
Low Carbon Energy

Transitions towards low-carbon energy systems will be comprehensive and demanding, requiring substantial public support. One important contribution from STS is to highlight the roles of citizens and public engagement. Until recently, energy users have often been treated as customers and passive market actors, or as recipients of technology at the margins of centralized systems. With respect to the latter role, critical or hesitant public action has been explained in terms of NIMBYism and knowledge deficits. This article focuses on the production of energy citizenship when considering public participation in low-carbon energy transitions. We draw upon the theory of ‘material participation’ to highlight how introducing and using emergent energy technologies may create new energy practices. We analyze an ongoing introduction of new material objects, highlighting the way these technologies can be seen as material interventions co-constructing temporalities of new and sustainable practices. We argue that artefacts such as the electric car, the smart meter and photovoltaic panels may become objects of participation and engagement, and that the introduction of such technologies may foster material participation and energy citizenship. The paper concludes with a discussion about the role of policies for low-carbon energy transitions on the making of energy citizenship, as well as limits of introducing a materially based energy citizenship.

scholarly journals Public Sentiment toward Solar Energy—Opinion Mining of Twitter Using a Transformer-Based Language Model

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 2673
Author(s):  
Serena Y. Kim ◽  
Koushik Ganesan ◽  
Princess Dickens ◽  
Soumya Panda
Keyword(s):  
Solar Energy ◽  
Opinion Mining ◽  
Language Model ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
The United States ◽  
Classification Model ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Public Sentiment ◽  
Net Metering

Public acceptance and support for renewable energy are important determinants of the low-carbon energy transition. This paper examines public sentiment toward solar energy in the United States using data from Twitter, a micro-blogging platform on which people post messages, known as tweets. We filtered tweets specific to solar energy and performed a classification task using Robustly optimized Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (RoBERTa). Our RoBERTa-based sentiment classification model, fine-tuned with 6300 manually annotated tweets specific to solar energy, attains 80.2% accuracy for ternary (positive, neutral, or negative) classification. Analyzing 266,686 tweets during the period of January to December 2020, we find public sentiment varies widely across states (Coefficient of Variation =164.66%). Within the study period, the Northeast U.S. region shows more positive sentiment toward solar energy than did the South U.S. region. Public opinion on solar energy is more positive in states with a larger share of Democratic voters in the 2020 presidential election. Public sentiment toward solar energy is more positive in states with consumer-friendly net metering policies and a more mature solar market. States that wish to gain public support for solar energy might want to consider implementing consumer-friendly net metering policies and support the growth of solar businesses.

scholarly journals Lessons Learned from the EU Referendum to Better Promote Nuclear Energy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew W Bingham
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Nuclear Industry ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Public ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Right

Abstract The need for investment in new nuclear is vital to achieve the decarbonization targets put forward by governments around the world (particularly in the UK) and secure the supply of energy for generations to come. For governments to invest in this costly and time-consuming solution public support is needed, something that has traditionally been difficult to attain. Similarities can be seen between the way nuclear is perceived today and how perceptions of the European Union were utilized to great effect in the British referendum on membership. Understanding of the real issues, targeting the right sections of the public and use of secondary messaging all combined to win a referendum for a side that was given very little hope of victory. A referendum type question on nuclear power would be similarly divisive with large supporter bases against the technology. Therefore, these lessons must be understood if the nuclear industry is to continue to grow and thrive in the modern and future low carbon economies.

scholarly journals Informed Citizen Panels on the Swiss Electricity Mix 2035: Longer-Term Evolution of Citizen Preferences and Affect in Two Cities

Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (22) ◽  
pp. 4231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dubois ◽  
Holzer ◽  
Xexakis ◽  
Cousse ◽  
Trutnevyte
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Electricity Mix ◽  
Pros And Cons ◽  
Use Efficiency ◽  
Citizen Preferences ◽  
End Use ◽  
Context Specific

For a successful transition to low-carbon electricity supply, public support is essential. Citizen preferences are best understood in the process of informed citizen panels, where citizens are informed about the pros and cons of various electricity technologies and spend time reflecting on the trade-offs. We investigated how information about electricity technologies and their sustainability impacts can change citizens’ preferences and affect for the complete Swiss electricity mix 2035. The citizens received information as factsheets and, during workshops, discussed in groups and built their preferred electricity mix using an interactive tool. The informed citizen panel (N = 33) in the Swiss city of Geneva showed high support for domestic renewable technologies and end-use efficiency, as well as low support for net electricity import, natural gas, and nuclear power. Preferences and affect for unfamiliar technologies changed after receiving information and remained stable even in the longer term four weeks after. Preferences and affect for already familiar technologies, like hydropower, barely changed. The same procedure in the two Swiss cities of Geneva and Zurich (N = 46) enabled the identification of robust support for renewable technologies and efficiency with only minor context-specific differences.

scholarly journals NER300: Success or Failure of Public Support for Low-emission Technologies?

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-196
Author(s):  
Grażyna Borys ◽  
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Innovation Process ◽  
Death Valley ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Low Emission

The Paris Agreement of December 2015 set a very ambitious target for the global reduction of greenhouse gases. Its implementation means the need to transform the global economy, including the European one, towards the economy characterised by the neutral level of these gases emission. Such transformation will not be possible without the dynamic development of breakthrough technological innovations on a large scale, which requires significant financial support from the public sector. This support should be primarily focused on the demonstration phase of the innovation process, which frequently turns into the so-called technological death valley. Demonstration projects are not commercial products as yet, they are characterized by untested technical reliability and the risk of no demand for products manufactured using new technologies. Therefore, private investors are not entirely willing to invest in them. In 2009 the European Union, in order to avoid the death valley, launched, through the promising innovative low-emission technologies, the NER300 programme – one of the world’s largest programmes supporting the supply of low-carbon commercial technologies, as one of the components of the Emissions Trading System – ETS. This programme is the subject of the presented article. Its purpose is to provide answers to three basic questions: 1) did the programme end with a success or a failure?; 2) what external and internal reasons determined the results of the programme?; 3) should the programme become a systemic element of the EU ETS? The article presents the results of NER300 and their interpretation in the context of the programme’s objectives. The research covering the reasons which determined the results of the programme used the existing subject literature on the NER300 programme and the special report issued by the European Court of Auditors presenting these results as well as the selected European Union documents and normative acts.

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