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Institutionalizing renewable electricity: the long-term potential for policy learning

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Abstract

Renewable electricity (RE) remains an elusive goal for many in the United States. However, particularly as a result of wind power in the past decade, RE is a growing segment of the United States economy and state energy portfolios. As a result, officials at every level of government, federal, state, and local, continue to be confronted with policy choices relating to the expansion of renewable electricity generation (REG). This paper examines the potential long-term effects of the construction of utility-scale (20+ megawatts or MW) REG power plants on the public lands, defined here as those lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The argument following suggests that these facilities contain the potential to institutionalize REG in a way that can inform policy learning within the energy sector at all levels of government, particularly intergovernmental policy collaboration.

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Notes

  1. The focus of this paper is renewable electricity, as opposed to renewable energy, which includes a larger sphere of fuels, including, for example, biofuels, used for transportation and heating.

  2. Utility-scale can be defined from a wide array of perspectives. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) (2015a) defines the term “utility-scale” as 20 MW or greater.

  3. A megawatt (MW) is a measure of electricity denoting one million watts. For reference, the Ivanpah Solar Electrical Generating System, the first and largest solar plant constructed on the public lands, produces 377 MW, enough to power 140,000 homes (Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (SEGS) 2015).

  4. The fossil fuel industry, for example, has been the recipient of a long history of governmental support, providing a level of stability unknown in the renewable energy sector (Friedman 1978; Vietor 1987; Sovacool 2008).

  5. The BLM has conducted Programmatic Environmental Impact Statements (PEIS) for solar, wind, and geothermal generation facilities on the public lands. The PEIS is a document examining all of the public lands managed by the BLM for REG facilities, with the intention that such a broad plan has the potential to “streamline” individual project Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) (BLM, 2015b; 2015c; and 2015d).

  6. Since World War II, many federal efforts have aimed to promote various alternative energy sources (see Vietor 1987). Throughout the 1970s, in response to the energy crises of 1973 and 1979, particularly under President Jimmy Carter, the federal government worked to promote renewable energy technology. Much of the policy promoting renewable energy, however, was dismantled under President Ronald Reagan (Katz 1984; Kash and Rycroft 1984).

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  1. Political Science Department, Hartwick College, PO Box 4020, Oneonta, NY, 13820, USA

    James Douglas Buthman

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Buthman, J.D. Institutionalizing renewable electricity: the long-term potential for policy learning. J Environ Stud Sci 5, 526–536 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-015-0304-2

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