By Stephen Lacey | greentechmedia
Americans say they love efficiency and clean energy. Take a look at any poll asking people whether they support these sectors and you’ll find strong agreement across party lines — in theory, anyway.
Implementation is usually when things get partisan.
The promotion of efficiency, renewables, and other climate-friendly technologies are done through public policy in order to allow them to compete in a market dominated by legacy players. In reality, people on the left are much more agreeable to government policies that explicitly benefit clean energy. And people on the right are much more skeptical of subsidies intended to promote a certain sector. A recent piece from the conservative Heritage Foundation on energy efficiency mandates illustrates this: of course, the author supports energy efficiency in theory; he just doesn’t approve of explicit targets.
So how does this play out in the states where most of the energy efficiency policy efforts are underway? A new analysis from CO2 Scorecard shows a partisan divide there too, with red states ranking far below blue states in terms of energy efficiency policies. As a consequence, Republican-leaning states use 55 percent more energy per capita than Democratic ones and emit nearly twice as much carbon.
