Leah C. Stokes, University of California-Santa Barbara

While renewable energy policy and technology deployment has grown exponentially across North America over the past two decades, there is a growing political backlash. Interest groups, political polarization and local public resistance to infrastructure are all presenting barriers to scaling up renewable energy at the pace necessary to address climate change. In this talk, I will present a number of findings from ongoing econometric and qualitative research on the political barriers to renewable energy policy and deployment in the electricity sector. I will also present some potential solutions to increasing public and elite support for renewable energy policies and technologies.