Avoiding Transitions, Layering Change: The Evolution of American Energy Policy

Abstract

During the 1970s, the American government created policies to engineer a transition away from oil, sparking a bitter debate over form of the new system. Since 1992, US policy makers again implemented policies to change the energy system but avoided articulating the details of a new energy system, calling for a vague, new “clean energy economy.” The process incrementally layered new institutional rules on top of existing institutions and catalyzed the growth of one of the largest renewable energy industries in the world. However, in contrast to the German approach, American policy seeks to expand all energy sources, an “all of the above” strategy. Veto points and players in the US political system led to a less ambitious program for the development of renewable energy.