Partisanship and energy efficiency program participation in the USA

Abstract

Abstract Utilities and municipal governments often implement energy efficiency programs to encourage households to improve the energy efficiency of their residences through measures such as weatherizing their homes, installing insulation, replacing inefficient appliances, setting up solar panels, among others. However, these programs often meet with variable success, with some having relatively few participants despite the promise of cost-savings for homeowners. Even as municipal-scale, home energy efficiency programs have grown in popularity, political polarization has increased in the USA. We suggest that political partisanship is an under-studied but potentially important predictor of program participation and use two datasets from Fort Collins, CO to evaluate the relationship between partisanship and energy efficiency program participation Our results imply that partisanship has a modest effect on program participation—this effect is also not highly robust. These results are encouraging in that they imply that partisanship does not greatly affect household decision-making to engage in energy efficiency programs, but at a grid or regional scale partisanship may act as a small barrier to energy efficiency.