>> All right, I think we'll
go ahead and get started.
Thank you all for coming
out on this chilly day.
I'm Sarah Mills.
I'm a postdoctoral fellow
in the Center for Local,
State, and Urban Policy.
CLOSUP. That's here
in the Ford School.
I'm a lecturer in the
program in the environment.
First, I want to thank
CLOSUP for sponsoring this,
as well thank and acknowledge
our cosponsors across campus.
We have the Political
Science Department program
and the environment,
the Climate Center,
and the Energy Institute.
So this was all made
possible by them.
This is a real special
opportunity for CLOSUP,
because in addition
to hosting these kind
of public events
throughout the semester,
we have two key research
activities that center
around public opinion or survey
research and what it means
for public policy, and so
it's a delight to welcome
to campus a fellow scholar
who has looked at this,
and it's particularly timely
to have David Konisky here,
not only because
his book is recent,
published just last year, but
right now, as many of you know,
states are trying to
decide how they will comply
with the federal
government Clean Power Plan
and which energy options
will be part of that
and so I look forward to hearing
what the public has to say
about that at least,
which might inform, then,
what their state
governments decide to do.
David Konisky is an associate
Professor of, let's see,
public and environmental
affairs.
>> Correct.
>> At Indiana University.
His research focuses on
American politics and policy,
and his most recent
book is an edited volume
on environmental policies, and
so I will turn it over to you.
Thank you for being here.
>> Great, thank you, Sarah.
[ Applause ]
So it's wonderful to be here.
Let me think again, Sarah for
hosting and for Barry Rabe,
who just walked in,
for inviting me.
It's a real great opportunity
to be here and to share
with you some of my research.
In this project has been,
sort of this book that came
out last fall, is a culmination
of a 10 year survey
project trying
to understand how the American
public thinks about energy,
and when we began this
project back in 2002,
we didn't actually know very
much about this question.
There had been some research
going back historically
about nuclear power, even before
the Three Mile Island accident
in the 1970, and a little
bit on oil going back
to the oil crises, but the
really had not been much work
trying to understand how
Americans think about,
or I sort of think about,
the bread-and-butter
of the energy generation,
which is coal and natural gas
in particular, and very
little work looking
across fuel sources, and that's
what this project is trying
to do.
Let me also acknowledge
my collaborator.
Stephen Solberg here, who
is out currently at Harvard.
We began this project we were
both at MIT some years ago.
So let me give you, sort of
a broad overview of findings,
particularly in case I don't get
through the entirety
of the talk.
I want you to at least
have a sense of the sort
of the main takeaways
from our research.
So the first thing,
is you look broadly
across the American
public, it is pretty clear
that Americans express
a preference
of reducing our reliance
on fossil fuels,
particularly coal and oil.
At the same time, there is
also really strong majorities
of the public that
want to enhance
or increase our use
our use of renewables,
especially solar and wind power.
As I mentioned, this
is a 10 year project,
and a lot has been happening in
the space over this 10 years,
and what's remarkable
about public opinion is
that attitudes have
remained really stable.
So we find very similar results,
whether the survey was done
in 2002 or 2011, 2013.
There's not a lot of shift
in American preferences
for energy sources, despite
all the changes we've seen
in the market, as
well as in policy.
So that's one key finding.
A second key finding is
one of the real goals
of this project is to understand
not just what people want
but why they wanted, and as
we're going to talk about,
the two attributes that matter
the most are how people view the
local environmental harms
associated with energy,
as well as their perceptions
of the different cost
of different energy choices.
But as you compare the weight
of those two attributes,
what matters the most
are people's perceptions
of local environmental harm,
and it's about twice as much,
sometimes three times as much as
the perceptions of cost in terms
of importance, and what's
really interesting about this is
that that weight
that people attribute
to environmental harm is the
same across all energy sources,
whether we're talking
about renewables,
whether we're talking
about fossil fuels
or even nuclear power.
It's the perception of local
term that matters the most.
A little bit more so
than perceptions of cost.
A third key finding
is that, you know,
where is climate change
in the story, right?
It turns out that concern
about global warming is
not a principal driver
of how people think about
the energy choices they have
or about their preferences.
This had changed a little bit
over the course of our study
but by and large, global
warming does not appear
to be the driving force
in explaining people who,
"I don't want to increase
the use of renewables
or decrease the use
of fossil fuels."
And then the final point I'd
like to make, I'll talk about
and at the very end of the talk
is about there is something
about how Americans think
about their energy choices
and what drives their attitudes
that also helps explain
their preferences
about climate policy,
and it turns out that
if you leverage their
perceptions,
if you connect their perceptions
to policy, where this comes up,
where this materializes in
terms of the most support,
is in terms of EPA regulation
in terms of greenhouse gases,
as opposed to other kinds
of policy instruments you might
think about such as a carbon tax
or cap in trade, and I'll
put that puzzle together
for you towards the
end of the talk.
Okay, so that's just
a broad overview.
Let me begin with
where we started.
So back in 2003, MIT released
a report called The Future
of Nuclear Power.
This was the first in a
long series of reports
that MIT has put together,
which I highly recommend,
which I've looked at the
scientific, economic,
and policy questions, associated
with different energy sources,
particularly focused on
the electricity sector,
and much of our research focuses
on the electricity sector,
as well, including everything
I'll talk about today,
and the thought experiment that
this group of nuclear scientists
and engineers were
thinking about was
if we face this global
challenge and climate change,
but what if we attempted
to really expand our use
of nuclear power, but in the
United States and world wide?
So there thought experiment
was, let's imagine a world
where we triple or
quadruple the number
of nuclear reactors
across the world.
So in the United
States, we have about 100
or so active nuclear reactors.
What if we tried to have 300
or 400 nuclear reactors, and,
you know, these are
nuclear engineers.
They're thinking about
the technical complexity
of such a challenge, but they've
got the foresight to think
about the fact that
historically,
the American public
has been resistant
to expanding nuclear power,
and the big part of the story
as to why we have not
had much expansion
in that particular sector
over the last few decades.
So as part of this study, we
did a public opinion poll,
and we try to understand
how Americans were thinking
about nuclear power
and other sources,
and one of the things
we found, which we found
to be quite puzzling
was that when you looked
at people's concern
about climate change it was
uncorrelated with support
for increasing power, right?
So this climate change
frame, right?
Thinking about this huge
challenge facing not just the
United States but the world
was going to insufficient,
in essence, to motivate a large
expansion of nuclear power,
and what's interesting about
this is a question that occurred
to us was, well, is this,
in particular, nuclear power
or does climate change not seem
to be driving people's attitudes
across a variety
of energy sources,
and this was the impetus for
our study, trying to think
about not just the role
about climate change,
but if it isn't climate change,
what other Factors Do Dr.,
Americans preferences
for solar and wind
or other fossil fuel
resources such as coal
and oil and natural gas.
So this was the starting
point, so what came
of this was a 10 year
plus survey project
where we repeatedly conducted
public opinion surveys,
asking that the American public
sort of a core set of questions
about their energy preferences,
and the key question,
essentially, you know, driving
the research is what future do
Americans want?
Thinking of them as consumers,
as voters, and more importantly,
perhaps, why they want one
path as opposed to another.
So what we did in the project,
essentially, are three things.
We measured attitudes.
We then compared these attitudes
across different fuel types.
We asked about seven fuel
types in particular, coal,
natural gas, oil, nuclear power,
hydropower, wind, and solar.
So the seven principal ways in
which we generate electricity
in the United States, and
then we wanted other asked the
question, "What explains
people's preferences?"
Okay, why is it that
some people want
to increase natural gas while
others want to decrease the use
of nuclear power, et cetera?
How does this then
factor into their choices
or their preferences about
energy, and energy policy?
And so that's just sort
of a broad overview
of what these projects
were about.
I'm not going to speak about
the specifics of polling.
I'm happy to do so in Q
and A. I just want to sort
of get straight to some
of the key results.
Okay, so the first question,
"What do people want?"
So to give you a
little context, in part,
because the world is changing.
Here's where we were when
we began our survey work,
in terms of the composition
of electricity generation
across sources in the
United States, right?
So in 2002, coal
represented about half.
It was half of the
electricity generation.
Nuclear power, about 20%,
and that's pretty much
the same it is today.
Natural gas is also
about 20%, okay?
Renewable were still,
they're way down here,
and they're pretty minor sources
of electricity generation
in 2002.
Okay? So here's where we
are today, and in fact,
we went to 2015 to
change a little bit more,
but the big changes have been
the declining use of coal.
We're witnessing a historic
decreased use of coal
in the United States for
electricity generation,
and there are lots of
factors associated with that.
One of the factors is that
we've had this huge boom
in the natural gas, as I'm sure
most of you are familiar with,
because of fracking
and other things.
So natural gas is increasingly
taking up a big portion of this,
and in fact, during some
portions of the year,
over the last year or so,
natural gas is actually exceeded
coal in terms of its use
for generating electricity.
So natural gas is taking
up a lot of that slack.
Nuclear power has remained
about the same, as a proportion
of the overall, and
we've had this big shift
in the increase of
renewables, right?
Wind and solar, in particular,
they're going very fast,
but still, as a proportion
of the overall portfolio,
there still quite small,
5-6% I think now for wind.
Solar power is still below 1%,
even though its's the
fastest growing source
in the electricity sector.
So this is what the world
looks like, and essentially,
what we're trying to do in this
part of the research is to see
if this is the future that
Americans actually want and sort
of match up, map on
attitudes to sort
of happening in the marketplace.
Okay, so this survey question
really forms the basis
of the entirety of
the book, right?
We're trying to understand
essentially what people want
in terms of energy, and you can
read the question to yourself,
but in essence, were suggesting
to the folks that we're going
to need to build things,
more power plants,
and you have some voice in
whether or not these are going
to be natural gas or coal or
wind, whatever the case may be,
and we want to ask folks whether
or not they want to increase
or decrease the use of
these different fuel types
or keep things about
the same, right?
This is the basic preference
question we asked the American
public repeatedly as
part of our surveys.
So here's what we find.
I'll focus first
on fossil fuels.
Hopefully, these colors you
can see, they project okay.
What you're looking at are five
different surveys conducted
different years,
from 2002 to 2013.
If we focus on coal
first, what you see is
that there's a strong majority
of the public that wants
to decrease the use of
coal, and it's pretty stable
over the course of
the surveys, right?
Fifty/60% suggesting they want
to reduce coal use or not use it
at all for generating
electricity.
Whereas only about maybe 1/4 at
most of the public, oftentimes,
closer to 1/5 would like to
see us increase the use of coal
as a source for generating
electricity.
Okay, if you move all the way
over to your right and look
at the graph for
oil, the first thing
to know is we really
don't use much oil
for electricity generation,
about 1%, but when we asked
out this question, you see
there's not much support
for changing that.
In fact, there's support for
decreasing the use of oil.
People tend to get this
a little bit wrong.
They tend to inflate the
amount of oil were using
in the electricity sector.
So what a lot of this
reflects, we think,
are sort of their views on oil
as a transportation fuel more
than anything else, but in
terms of their preferences,
you see very few people want
to see an increased use of oil
across these five
different surveys.
Natural gas is really
interesting,
because the public is I
don't want to say ambivalent,
but they're generally positive
towards the use of natural gas.
There is some segment of
the population that would
like to see us use less of it.
That actually has been
shrinking in recent years,
but there's a growing percentage
of the public that's quite happy
with the amount of natural
gas that we're using or would
like to see us use more
of it into the future.
Okay, so those are
the fossil fuels.
Let me turn next to some of the
other fuels that we asked about.
If you look at solar
and wind, right,
you're seeing really big
green, right, to contrast it
with these other graphs, right?
What this reflects is
a preference expressed
by the American public
around the order of 75 to 80%
of wanting to see
renewables enhanced.
This is a very strong majority.
It's reflected in other
survey work done by others.
Americans are very enthusiastic
about solar and wind power.
Hydropower actually looks quite
similar, not quite as strong,
but 65-70% wanting to
increase the use of hydropower,
even though we're not
doing much new hydropower,
if any, in this country.
I think, as importantly, for
the other side of that equation,
very few people express a
preference to using less, right?
So there's not much
fight or opposition
to the expansion of renewables.
Nuclear power is probably
the most interesting case
because it evokes, for some
there's really strong support
for increasing nuclear power.
There's also equally
strong opposition
to increasing nuclear power.
So the opinion here is quite
polarized, and it reflects sort
of the historical tension
over the use of nuclear power.
Some people are quite
divided on this.
Okay, so this is just sort
of the overall story
regarding people's preferences.
So to sort of step back and give
you some brought observations.
People clearly want more wind
and solar, perhaps less coal,
oil, and nuclear power.
Natural gas is somewhere
in the middle.
Preferences pretty
stable over time.
So if you think back to
those graphs, generally,
the lines are pretty
much straight.
There's not much shift.
There's some in the later
years, but not much.
And interestingly, and this
is not really reflected
in those graphs, but
I can sort of point
out from another analysis
we did as part of the book,
is that there are very few
people who we might consider
to be pure conservationists, who
express a preference of wanting
to reduce the use of all
energy sources, okay?
At the same time, there
are very knew people
who we would characterize
as being supporters
of all of the above.
All of the above is
sort of the catchphrase
that President Obama has
use over the last few years,
at least, to talk about
his energy policy,
and there are very few people
that actually express
a preference
for increasing everything, and
what this suggests to us is
that people are actually
making choices here.
They do have preferences
across energy choices.
They're not just filling
out a survey question
and hitting increase, increase,
increase, which is something,
as a survey researcher,
you worry about.
So people actually
have preferences here.
They're making distinctions
across these energy sources.
So what this suggests to us
and what the question you next
to should be asking
is why is this?
What is it about
the energy choice?
What is driving how people
think about these set of issues.
Okay, so let me turn
to that next.
So why do people
want what they want?
Or our catch phrase is why do
people love solar and he coal?
Okay, so what we developed
in the book is the idea
that you think about
energy preferences
through a certain framework
of what we're calling a
consumer model, which is to say,
people don't inherently
like or dislike a fuel type.
People don't love solar
because it's solar
or love wind because it's wind.
They don't dislike
coal because it's coal.
Okay, this is the
fuel source itself.
It is the attributes of these
energy sources that matter.
So let me say more about that.
So it's like any other
product on the market place.
There are things about
products that people want,
and in the case of energy,
there are two attributes
which we have identified as
being the most important.
It's the perception
of environmental harms
that people attribute to
different kinds of energy use,
as well as their
perceptions of the cost
of these energy sources.
Okay, you can think about these
in terms of economic costs
or social costs in the case
of environmental harms.
So these two factors
mater the most.
So if you look at this
graph, just let me explain,
this is looking at
those two attributes
across the different
energy sources
that we asked our
questions about.
Everything is pegged
towards existing coal.
So having your head in existing
coal-fired power plant, okay?
And you can measure what we call
social cost, which you can think
about is the environmental
harms associated with burning
or creating electricity from
one of these fuel sources.
So relative to existing coal,
everything else is cleaner.
Everything else has
less social cost.
That's why everything is to
the left of coal here, okay?
At the same time, all
other energy sources,
at least when we began.
These numbers are from 2012, put
together by Michael Greenstone.
He's an economist at
University of Chicago.
All other energy sources
were more expensive in terms
of the cost, and here we're
measuring something called
levelized which you can think
about as sort of the cost
of bringing a new power
source online if we were
to begin planning today.
So it's everything to the inputs
to the concrete to the labor
that goes into building
a power plant
or a large energy provider.
Okay, so what this reflects is
that there's a trade-off, right?
In the current marketplace,
we don't have fuels
that are both cheap
and clean, right?
We have fuels that are either
inexpensive and dirty (Think
of coal), or we have fuels that
are clinging but expensive.
Think of renewables, right?
So in the short term, we
have, there's a trade off,
and people are essentially
weighing this trade-off.
They're thinking
about these attributes
when they're making choices
or expressing preferences
about energy use.
In the long run,
because of technology,
we may get to a place
where particular fuels are
both cheap and clean, right?
And that can be by making
dirty fuels cleaner, right?
Think carbon capture
and storage for coal.
Or it can be by driving the
cost curve down even more
so than we seen already
for solar power and wind
and things of that nature, okay?
But the idea here is that
there's a technology trade off
in the short term, and we
want to see if this kind
of framework maps onto
people's attitudes
and explains their
energy choices.
Okay, so we ask.
We asked people to
express their perceptions
of the harms associated with
different energy sources, okay?
In the way the questions are
phrased, we're tapping into,
here their perceptions of
the local environmental harm
that comes from generating
electricity
from the sources, okay?
So in particular, you want to
think about something like coal,
people are thinking about air
pollution, be it particulates
or sulfur dioxide and
nox that create ozone,
things of that nature.
Perhaps mercury and
toxics, and they're thinking
about the health impacts that
come from exposure, right?
So think about asthma
or respiratory ailments,
things of that nature, okay?
So we asked people to
express a preference
about the harms the attribute to
these different energy sources.
The way the graphs aligned,
if you will think things
are presenting no harm,
those get higher values
on this graph, right?
So not surprisingly, to start,
over here renewables do
fairly well on this measure.
People recognize that,
generally, electricity from wind
and solar power don't generate
the kind of health burdens,
the kind of local
environmental impacts,
that fossil fuels do, okay?
Fossil fuels are over on
the side, and people sort
of get their general
ranking correct
across coal, oil,
and natural gas.
They recognize that
generating electricity
from natural gas produces
less environmental impact
than generating electricity
from coal or oil.
Nuclear power tends to be
viewed as the most harmful.
Of course, the impacts here
are a little bit different.
What people are thinking
about when they consider nuclear
power are the hazardous waste
questions and how you store
the long-term hazardous waste,
as well as the potential
for a catastrophic
accident of some kind.
People tend to over inflate
the probability of an accident
and a nuclear power plant, but
they worry about that a lot
because of the dread
associated with it.
So people worry quite a
bit about nuclear power,
although for different reasons.
So what you see here is
people's perceptions of harm.
They're measured in
these different surveys.
They're pretty similar
across the surveys.
So again, some indication
that things are pretty stable.
So let me show you the same
graph for people's perceptions
of cost, and this is
pretty interesting.
So people look at what you might
call traditional fuels, coal,
natural gas, oil, nuclear power,
and they generally get the
perceptions of cost right
for these fuel sources.
They recognize that coal
and natural gas are
fairly inexpensive,
relative to oil I should say.
They recognize that nuclear
power is little bit more
expensive, but what's
really interesting
about this is how people view
the cost of renewables, right?
People tend to underestimate
the cost of renewable energy.
Perhaps because the sun
is shining, it's free.
The wind blows, we don't
have to pay for it.
They are thinking about
the input cost, right?
Not recognizing the other
challenges that come
with generating these ways of
electricity, and, of course,
the world here has
changed quite a bit, right?
So the cost of generating
electricity
from these sources has
come down quite a bit
since we started this, but,
you know, go back to 2002.
Solar power was probably
in the order
of 50 times more
expensive than coal in 2002.
Yet people are expressing
the perception
that this is really inexpensive.
All right, so they're
getting this part
of the story little
bit incorrect.
Okay, so, pulling back.
Some big observations, things
I want you to remember.
So people have the
relative harms about right.
In terms of a rank ordering,
the best we can view in terms
of how they're viewing
local environmental impacts,
people have those about correct.
In terms of cost, things
are generally right
with the exception
of renewables.
People tend to underestimate the
price of providing electricity
from solar and wind
in particular.
So this is important.
I want to sort of put this
into your head right now.
I'll come back to it a little
bit later, and the idea here is
that if we were to correct
people's misperceptions
about the cost of renewables,
this would have the application
of potentially lowering
their support for renewables
if our framework is right.
So if people are thinking about
attributes, and that's a driver
in their attitudes,
and they're assuming
that renewables are less
expensive than they are,
if you correct that, that may
actually result in a reduction
in support of renewable
power, okay?
And I'll show you some evidence
for specifically on that point
in a little bit, but
this is the implication
of this framework, right?
If attributes matter, if
you change information
or you cut information, their
misperceptions in the attitudes,
this can make a difference.
It's going to matter
less in the case of harm,
to the extent the people are
already getting this right.
Okay? Okay, so I described
to you what people want
from the attributes.
The next question is how much
do these attributes matter?
How do people relate the
perceptions of these attributes
with their preferences
for energy?
Okay, so our goal in this
part of the analysis is
to estimate what we call
the weights, what we think
about is the importance
of these attributes
in explaining people's
opinions about energy use.
So just how important
are costs and harms?
How do they compare to
other factors, right?
Particularly things
like political ideology
or partisan ID, which have been
shown throughout [inaudible]
policy to be really important
drivers of attitudes.
How do things like education and
income or where you live factor
into people's energy choices.
There are a whole
set of other factors
which might actually predict
people's preferences for energy
across these fuel sources.
So we pursue two strategies for
understanding this question.
The first is pretty simple
multiple progression.
So statistical analysis, and
the second part is we include
experiments in our
surveys, all right,
where we can manipulate the
information people are getting
before the answer questions
on these particular attributes
to sort of see if you
can move public opinion.
I'm just going to briefly talk
about some of the evidence
from each of these two different
approaches that we will discuss
in much more detail
as part of the book.
Okay, so let me start with
the simple regression model,
and I'm trying to
explain this intuitively,
setting the math aside, but
essentially, what we're setting
up here is we're trying
to explain why here,
which is an individual's
preference for increasing
or decreasing the use of
one of those seven fuels
in one of our surveys, okay?
And we argue that this is a
function of their perceptions
of environmental harm, their
perceptions of economic costs,
and a whole bunch of other
stuff, including their concern
about climate change, whether
or not they're Republican
or Democrat, whether or not they
are liberal or conservative,
if they live in California
or Florida,
depending on the college
education, they're income,
gender, all those
kinds of things, okay?
So what we can do from this
is first compare coefficients
on harm and cost to get a sense
of just how important
are these attributes
in people's assessments of what
kind of fuel they want to use.
All right?
So the size of the
coefficient of B and C
in this model will tell us that.
We can then compare
the importance of harm
and cost across fuels, right?
So it could be possible that
people are putting more weight
on harms, let's say for
coal, less so on renewables.
Or it's possible they could
be similar across fuel types.
Same thing for cost, and then
finally, we can get a sense
of the total effect of
these two attributes,
compared other factors.
So, perhaps we find, you know
statistically significant
effects, but they
are small in terms
of explaining the overall
variation in preferences,
and what matters the most is if
you're a Republican or Democrat
or if you have a high
education or low education,
high income/low income
things like that.
So that's the nature
of the analysis.
So what let me show you
one set of results on this,
and this takes a little
bit of explanation.
So what you're looking
at, in essence,
in each year is a separate
statistical model that's
estimating those weights
of an environmental harm,
an economic cost, as well as
concern over climate change
or global warming, okay?
And we do this separately
for each
of the different energy
sources we asked about.
I'm showing you for
on the graph here.
So one more piece of context,
the way these variables are
measured for harms and costs,
higher value suggest they are,
that a fuel source
is less harmful
or more inexpensive,
less expensive, okay?
So what does the show?
If you look at the top left and
look at the coal graph first,
what this is basically showing
is that if you view coal
to be less harmful,
not surprisingly,
you want to increase its use.
If you view the cost of coal to
be particularly less expensive,
then you want to see its
use increased, as well.
Okay? Global warming is
measured in the opposite way.
So if you're more concerned
about global warming, you may,
theoretically, at least,
think that you'd want
to use coal less, which is why
that line is generally
negative, okay?
So what can you pull away
from these kinds of graphs?
The first thing to note is
that harm has a larger
weight than cost, right?
So that coefficient,
that B, those Bs and Cs
that I showed you
on the last slide.
The weight of harm is about
2 to 3 times more important
than the weight of cost.
They both matter, but people,
when they're making their
assessments about energy,
they're putting more weight
about their perceptions
of local environmental of energy
source impacts of energy source,
in this case coal,
much more so than cost.
In terms of climate change, if
you look in the early years,
this is essentially around
zero, which you can interpret
as being uncorrelated.
Meaning, the more
you're concerned
about climate change did not
have an independent effect
on your wanting to increase
or decrease the use of coal.
Very similar to the finding
I showed you the beginning
of the talk on nuclear power.
That begins to change
a little bit as we go
through our surveys, but
still, the overall weight
of climate change, while close
to the perception of cost,
is much less important
than perception
of local environmental
harms, okay?
So what this essentially
means is
that what's driving
people's preferences
about coal use is not
concerned about climate change
but concerns about local
environmental impacts,
and that concern about local
environmental impacts has a
weight of about two or three
times more than their worry
about cost of utilizing
that energy source.
So I'm not to go through all
of these, but if you, you know,
nuclear shows a very
similar pattern, right?
Harms matter more.
Climate change matters
not much at all.
In fact, this is
hovering around zero
for the entirety of our surveys.
Something similar
for natural gas.
A little bit less distinction
between harms and costs,
but harms are still always
more important than costs,
and something similar for
solar, although things begin
to converge in our
latest survey.
The one exception I do
want to highlight is
that for solar power, and
when looks very similar,
climate change is
playing a little bit more
of an important factor.
So people who are particularly
worried about global warming
or climate change, that is the
relatively important factor
in explaining their
wanting to increase the use
of solar power and wind power.
And it's almost, not
quite, close to being on par
with their concerns about
local environmental impacts.
Okay, hopefully that was clear.
So I just showed you a bunch
of correlations, right?
A Cisco analysis correlation
that people's concern
about attributes are correlated
with their preferences
for different kinds
of energy use.
The next question is whether
or not this is causal, right?
Whether or not we're getting the
direction of the effect correct,
and this is where survey
experiments can help, right?
One way to think about this
is can you move people's
preferences on energy by giving
them information about prices,
about pollution,
about climate change?
So if our story is right
in our framework is right,
we should be able to
move people, right?
We should be able to
give them information
that shifts their understanding
of these attributes,
and that should that
affect how they value,
how much they prefer
different kinds of energy.
So do this, and almost
all of our surveys,
we included what is known
as framing experiments.
You provide some portion
of your sample information,
and you compare that to part
of your sample that's a control
group, that gets no information.
So it's very much similar
to a laboratory experiment,
just in a survey context.
So I'm just going to show
you one survey experiment
that we did.
We did many, but this is
one that's pretty indicative
of the kind of things
that we did.
So, in essence what we do
is we provide information
to the survey respondents
prior to the question
that I showed you at the
beginning of the talk
on their preferences of
different energy use,
for increasing or
decreasing the use of energy.
Some portion of the
survey sample is a control.
They get no information, and in
fact, everything I showed you
to this point are results
from a control group
that received no information
about prices or pollution
or climate change or
anything else, right?
They're just responding to the
survey question as you saw it
about 20 minutes ago, but then
what we do is we divide part
of the survey into
these different groups.
We give them different
treatments.
In this particular
survey experiment,
we're only manipulating cost.
We're providing the survey
respondent information
about the cost of
generating electricity
from different sources,
and because the survey
was particularly focused
on nuclear power, we
actually had to treatments
on the cost for nuclear power.
So this is what survey
respondents saw, at least those
who were not in the
control group.
They're told that IEA is a
leading source of information
on energy resources, and
they estimated the cost
of generating electricity
from these different sources,
and then the first treatment
group receives this information,
as you see it without the red.
I'm just highlighting the red
because we changed the
nuclear power information.
So we align information on the
cost of generating electricity
from these different
sources, and clearly, here,
we're telling them that coal and
natural gas are less expensive,
or the least expensive, less
expensive the nuclear power
or oil, and renewables
are quite expensive, okay?
Again, these numbers
have changed quite a bit,
so don't get hung up on
the particular numbers.
This is also 2007,
before we've seen sort
of the really declining cost
and solar power in particular,
as well as the declining
cost of natural gas.
What's most important is
sort of getting a sense
of the rank ordering and
what people are being told
about these energy sources,
this is information that was
about right when the survey
was conducted in 2007,
and then the second
treatment gets the same set
of information.
The only change nuclear
power, right?
So if our framework is correct,
what we might imagine
happening here is
across these two treatments,
people who get this information
should be more enthusiastic
about nuclear power than people
who get this information, right?
As well, people who get
this treatment compared
to the control may be more
enthusiastic about fossil fuels
and less enthusiastic
about renewables,
because we're giving them
information about the cost
of these different ways
of generating electricity.
Okay, so here's what we find.
So just to orient you,
this is the control group.
What these numbers reflect is
a sort of a score on our scale
of energy preferences.
Whereas zero, the bottom of
the scale, is people who want
to see us not use this
energy source at all,
and the highest value of
five, it's a six-point scale,
would want to see us increase
that energy source a lot.
So what you're seeing
in the control group reflects
what I've already showed you,
right?
People are really
enthusiastic about renewables,
solar, wind, and hydro.
A little bit less
so for coal and oil,
and natural gas is
somewhere in the middle,
and nuclear power somewhere
in the middle, as well.
Okay? So everything but nuclear
power, I combined the results
for those two treatments,
because they got
the same information
and there's really no difference
between the two treatments.
But let me show you
what happens here.
So if for coal, given the
fact that you are presented
with price information
on coal, what you see is
if there's an increase in
support for utilizing coal
of utilizing coal of about
half a point of our scale,
which in survey world
is a pretty big effect.
So it's a pretty big jump
in people's preferences given
this pretty modest treatment
about what the price
is of coal relative
to other energy sources.
Similarly, you see jumps in
support, although not quite
as big, for natural
gas, as well as for oil.
But then look down at the
renewables here, and you'll see
that we find pretty big effects,
but their negative, right?
So when people are told that
renewables are more expensive,
it decreases their enthusiasm.
It decreases the amount
of support they have
for utilizing these energy
sources, and then finally,
for nuclear power, we recall
we had two treatments.
This was $150 per month.
This was $100 per month.
Relative to the control, you
see an increase in support
for nuclear power, as well,
consistent with that
information.
So what we do here and what we
do another survey experiments is
manipulate this information
about cost or climate change
or local pollution to
get a sense of whether
or not these attributes are
sort of causatively prior.
They're actually determining
people's attitudes about energy,
and we're convinced
that they do.
Okay, so let me pull
back one more time,
to sort of summarize
this part of the talk.
So people give more
weight to harms than costs,
local environmental
harms, about 2 to 3 times.
Harms matter more than
costs for all fuels, right?
So this framework about
harms and costs works
across these different
fuel types.
So you're talking about wind
or solar or nuclear or coal.
The same basic story holds.
What I didn't show you but
I want to sort of get back
to you is sort of the overall
importance of these attributes.
So it turns out that just
knowing how people perceive
harms and costs explains about
80% of the explained variance
of energy choices,
which basically means
that other factors
that I haven't shown you
don't matter very much.
Party does not matter very much.
It's really hard to find
any issue in public policy
where party is not a
driving factor, okay?
Political ideology
is not mattering.
Where you live is not
mattering very much.
Education/income, they
matter on the margins,
but we can explain people's
preferences, at least 80%
of their preferences,
simply by knowing
if they perceive a fuel choice
to be harmful to the environment
or costly or vice versa.
So these attributes really
do a lot of the heavy work
of explaining people's
attitudes, and finally,
the point emphasizes
that climate change is,
at best, secondary, right?
People worrying about climate
change is not driving their
energy choices, at least as
they express them in a survey.
In some cases, they're
completely uncorrelated
with energy choices,
although this has begun
to change a little bit
in our later years.
Okay, how am I doing on time?
>> You're good.
>> Okay, so let me
conclude by talking
about policy implications,
what this all means.
We're very interested
in what this all means
for climate change.
That is sort of the policy
and political question
at stake here, and frankly,
when we got through this part
of the analysis, we were
a little distressed,
a little concerned, right?
Because one of the key findings
here is that people's concern,
people worry about climate
change is not influencing how
they want to see sort
of the electricity center
allocated across sources.
And electricity, certainly,
is not the only contributor
to greenhouse gases, but it's a
very large one, and one that has
to be reckoned with if we're
going to address both domestic
and international emissions.
So again, just to summarize our
distress, I guess, you know,
concern about climate change
is not a driving factor
in people's energy choices.
An analysis that I didn't
show you but we also do
in the book is that
when you ask people
about their climate
change preferences, people,
for example, express a
very low willingness to pay
to address climate change.
So if you ask them, we sort
of did a sort [inaudible]
experimentals while other survey
approaches, how much
they're willing to pay
to address climate change,
half the public is
willing to pay nothing.
Another 20% may be to
pay $5 extra per month
on their electricity
bill, maybe $10.
Nothing at the scale that
we're probably talking
about to make the
kind of transition
to de-carbonize the
electricity sector.
People's willingness to pay for
climate change is really low.
It also turns out that, as
you probably already know,
climate change is not
a highly salient issue
for most of the public.
So places like Gallup asks every
month the most important problem
question, as we talk about
it in the survey world.
They ask people to volunteer the
most important problem facing
the country, and they tend to
say the economy or healthcare.
Today it would probably
be terrorism, right?
Climate change, energy,
environment,
generally registers about 1%.
Sometimes 2%, 2% if oil
prices are really high,
in essence, right?
Climate change is not a factor
that's on top of people's minds.
Also asking people what's most
important to them in terms
of environmental issues,
and Gallup has been doing
this for about 20 years.
Climate change generally
ranks at the very bottom.
When people express
their level of concern
for different environmental
problems,
climate change is pretty
much at the very bottom.
At the top are things like
air quality, water quality,
pollution in rivers and
streams, drinking water quality,
things like that, right?
So you put this together
with our survey results,
it leaves you thinking
and worried about, well,
how do we move forward towards
changing the energy sector
if climate change is not
such an important factor
in how people think about this?
And, a final point to
make, and this comes
out of the survey experiments is
that education may actually
be counterproductive.
I don't want to take
that too far.
So don't quote me if there's
any media in the room.
Which is to say that if
you were to correct some
of the misperceptions
people have about energy,
it may not actually lead you
to more support for renewables
in particular if people are
getting the cost wrong, right?
So that is something we have
to sort of bear in mind.
That just beating
people over the head
with more information may not
be sufficient for a change.
Okay, so how do we
get out of this box?
So if we think broadly about
policies that are out there
to deal with greenhouse
gas emissions
from the electricity
sector, there are three
that we commonly talk about.
The first are some sort of
regulation of emissions.
We think about it as
regulatory caps, right?
This, in essence, is what the
clean power plant is, right?
The EPA is telling
states that we're going
to capture greenhouse gas
emissions at such a level,
and we're going to allow
you to figure out a way
to reach those limits.
You can look at state, when
we look at portfolio standards
or other clean energy
mandates in a similar way.
More indirect, but the idea
here is that we're going
to change emissions
through some sort
of regulatory mandate, okay?
That's one set of policies
that we have out there.
A second set of policies,
of course, is cap-and-trade,
and five years ago everyone
expected cap-and-trade
at the national level was going
to be the way we pursued
this problem, right?
It was the central police of
the legislation that made it
through the U.S. House but
not the Senate in 2009/2010.
So, in essence, cap-and-trade
is regulation, a regulatory cap,
along with trade
allowances, right?
So you're allowing regulated
sources to buy and sell permits
in a way to reduce the
cost, overall cost,
to society of reaching these
admissions gains, right?
Everyone agrees this is
a more efficient approach
than regulation itself.
So we have regulation, we
have cap-and-trade, then,
of course is the Carbon Tax,
and if you ask pretty much any
economist, they'll tell you
that this is the preferred
policy instrument, right?
You can imagine this being both
a usage tax or a production tax,
and everyone agrees that is more
efficient than a regulatory cap,
and people generally agree that
it would be easier to implement
than a cap-and-trade
system, okay?
So generally speaking, these are
the three policies people talk
about in the climate
area, at least in terms
of electricity generation.
So what do we know about public
support for these policies?
And what we did essentially was
grab a whole bunch of surveys,
including some that
Barry had done,
to ask about people's climate
policy preferences, and we tried
to come up with sort of a rough
average of people's support
for these different
areas of climate policy,
and what you find
is the following.
You find really large,
substantial support
for regulation, right?
For the EPA taking direct action
to regulate carbon dioxide,
greenhouse gas emissions, okay?
Seventy-five to 80%
in some surveys.
You find support
for cap-and-trade
to be a little bit less resound.
Some surveys you find bare
majorities of support.
Others, bare majorities
of opposition, right?
And people generally, you know,
you don't have strong
support one where the other.
It's just sort of there.
Carbon Tax there's the
most noise around this,
and it's because people are
less familiar with carbon taxes,
and a lot depends on
the level of the tax
and how you might use
the revenue, right?
And survey questions are
all over the map in terms
of how they assess a
tax, at what level,
and what revenue might be used.
So support ranges
from very low, 25%.
In some cases, you
can get over 50,
depending on how you
talk about the revenue.
All right, so revenue,
people have talked
about as her being a
dividend back to taxpayers.
They could be used to
invest in clean energy,
energy efficiency programs.
It can be used to
pay down the deficit.
Lots of different ways you
could bring that question,
and that explains why there's
so much variance
around that policy.
But the big picture is there's
pretty large public support
for regulation.
That's the main point I
want you to keep in mind.
So it raises this puzzle, right?
So why do Americans
prefer what everyone agrees
to be the least efficient,
the worst way to go
about reducing emissions from
the electricity sector, right?
If you are interested
in efficiency,
and probably simplicity, it
would be a carbon tax, right?
It would not be a clean
power plan or anything akin
to a clean power plan,
like we're seeing now,
but Americans really
want something
like the clean power plan,
or more generally,
regulation on carbon.
So it's a bit of a puzzle,
and this brings us back
to the research that we
did in our findings, right?
So it turns out that people
see a direct link or connection
between those attributes
or how they view energy
but I talked about.
Local environmental
impacts, perceptions of cost,
but particularly local
environmental harms
with EPA regulation.
They are making a connection.
They believe that
through EPA regulation,
you're actually going to achieve
something beyond climate policy.
You're going to generate
these dividends in terms
of reducing the local
environmental impacts
that they care most about.
Moreover, they don't
see these dividends,
these co-benefits alongside
carbon taxes or cap-and-trade.
In other words, people
view EPA regulation
as environmental policy,
and people like environmental
policy in this country.
They view these other
instruments of climate policy,
and people are either
divided on climate policy
or don't know what
climate policy is, right?
And I'm going to show you
some evidence of this,
but in essence, the regulatory
approach to people favor is
because they're a little bit
more comfortable with it,
and they view it as producing
things that they care about,
and they don't see other
climate approaches is doing the
same thing.
So let me show you
evidence of this.
So what you're looking at here
is a graphic that is trying
to explain public support
across these three
different policy instruments.
A regulatory cap, a
cap-and-trade system,
or a carbon tax, and the
very bottom here is looking
at just the factor,
that dark gray,
of people's climate
change concern.
So just knowing how concerned
people are about climate change
or global warming explains
some of the overall support
for these energy sources,
and what you see is people
who are most concerned
about climate change,
it generates quite a bit of
support for cap-and-trade,
about the same support
as a regulatory cap.
So in essence just knowing a
climate concern, it puts the cap
on the cap-and-trade
on par with each other.
Carbon tax less so.
Just being concerned
about climate change is
not strongly correlate
with wanting a carbon tax, okay?
What's really interesting is
when you add on perceptions
of those normal attributes,
or those energy attributes
that I've been talking about
throughout the morning.
When you add on perceptions
of the environmental harms
of traditional fuels, the
cost of traditional fuels,
as well as alternatives, what
you see is that you can explain
or you can generate,
if you will,
high levels of predicted support
for a regulatory cap, right?
So this is all done
through Cisco-Miley,
which I won't go into,
but you get to a point
where just knowing
about once concern
about climate change also
knowing these concerns
about attributes of energy
generates about 80% support
for a regulatory cap,
but those same factors
to generate an equivalent amount
of support in cap-and-trade
or a carbon tax, right?
So in essence, they
help a little bit,
particularly the local
environmental harms,
which is associated here
with traditional fuels,
but they don't generate the
same amount of overall support
for these climate policies.
So point here is that people
are making a linkage in terms
of regulation and the
environmental harms associated
with these energy choices, and
they see that as being part
of the cap and not part
of these cap-and-trade
and carbon tax policies.
Okay, so what does this mean
for its applicable implications?
So to take home points
and then I'm going to stop
and open it up for discussion.
Concern about climate
change is not enough to deal
with climate change, at
least in this country, okay?
Even though the majority of
the public in most surveys
that you have seen, including
the stuff that we have done,
just because a majority
expresses concern
about climate change does
not mean a majority is going
to favor a particular
policy approach
to climate change, okay?
This may explain why we have
had, you know, large support
in this country for concern
about climate change
for a long time.
We have yet to see, at least
to Congress, that is responsive
in terms of passing
national legislation,
but the good news is there's
another way, another path,
if you will, towards getting
towards climate policy.
Actually, there are
multiple piles.
The one that we focus the most
on and we think there is a lot
of promise for is to
address climate change
by pursuing policies that are
at least less explicitly
about climate.
Okay? So one example would be
regulating the co-pollutants
of carbon dioxide that come
out of coal-fired power
plants in particular, right?
So if you regulate mercury or if
you regulate particulate matter,
you're going to drive
up the cost
of deriving electricity
from coal.
You're going to drive
coal out of the market.
You can get cleaner sources, and
as a derivative, you're going
to get less carbon, right?
The policy itself is not
explicitly target carbon
dioxide, but you get
same benefit, right?
So that's one important
strategy, and frankly,
it's one you've seen this
current administration pursue,
and while EPA does not
talk about climate change
when they're advocating, let's
say, the toxics rule for mercury
or tightening the ozone
standard, which they did just
in the past couple of months,
if you talk to people
inside the administration,
they will often tell you this
is part of a larger strategy
to deal with climate change.
This is all about making
coal more expensive,
and allowing alternatives,
natural gas and renewables
to enter the marketplace on a
more cost-competitive basis.
The other important
dimension is in terms
of communication
strategies, right?
So rather than talk more and
more about climate change,
which frankly is what the
environmental movement has done
for the last two decades, right?
If we could just convince
people that's going
to be really, really bad.
Temperatures are going
to get really hot.
We're going to have really
bad, extreme weather.
That's going to convince
them that they're going
to push their policymakers
to make changes in policy.
The implications of our study is
that may not be very effective.
In fact, it hasn't been very
effective over the course
of the last couple of decades.
If instead, you talk about
clean energy and dirty energy,
and you have in your
mind is attributes
that really push people's
attitudes on energy,
you're likely to make more
progress, particularly
if you push on the local
environmental impact,
which people care about, and
just one anecdote on this.
I'll say this in conclusion.
Some of you may be familiar
with the Sierra Club's
Beyond Coal Campaign,
which has been very effective
in leading to the retirement
of coal-fired power plants.
They take a lot of
credit for this.
Natural gas as part of the
story, as is EPA regulation,
but we've had in this country
about, I think, over 250 now,
coal-fired power plants retired
in the past five or six years.
If you look at the
messaging of the Sierra Club
around the retirement
of these power plants,
it's really not about
climate change.
They're talking about
asthma, particularly in kids.
They're talking about
other respiratory ailments
that come along with
burning coal.
They're talking about toxics.
They are not talking
about climate change,
because they know it also
has not been a very effective
strategy, right?
They care about climate change.
They care about asthma
too, right?
They care about local
environmental pollution,
but fundamentally, they
care about climate change,
and that's what the Beyond
Coal Campaign is about.
But they've adjusted their
medication strategy in a way
where they're speaking less
and less about climate change,
and I think we're
seeing the same thing,
we'll see the same thing
materialize with respect
to implementation of the
EPA's Clean Power Plan.
When states go about trying to
change their electricity sector,
they're going to be talking
more about energy attributes
and clean and dirty energy,
as opposed to climate change.
I think I'll leave
it there, thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you very, very much.
Given us last to think
about and talk about
and hopefully discuss, and we
have 25 minutes to do that.
So I'll open it up.
Just so you know, there's
a boom microphone here.
So as long as you talk
so that we can hear you,
should be able to be picked up.
All right, so, go ahead.
>> It seems like the local farms
is a big piece of the picture.
I don't know if you collected
data that sort of allowed us
to look at this, or if you
have just any thoughts.
But I'm curious as to
whether you have any sense
of people's concerns being
related to actual locations.
Like, where they actually are
living and how much, you know,
[inaudible] are in their area
or [inaudible], and is it kind
of like their real,
perceived, like, I am concerned
about the power plant
down the road,
or is it a more abstract
concern about local pollution
that might occur
around [inaudible]?
>> Yeah, so that's
a great question.
So we don't directly look at --
so the basis for our analysis
is people's perceptions
of these harms or
costs, and, you know,
people obviously have
different experiences
and their perceptions may
be based on local realities
or maybe based on their
just general knowledge
about the sector, right?
But one could sort of, you know,
dive down into particular
communities and sort of see
if things are more salient, I
guess, but we haven't done that.
There's some research
that looks at sort
of these more localized effects,
particularly around wind
and nuclear power, and
sometimes you get results
which may be counter intuitive.
So, for example, on nuclear
power, people who tend
to be the most supportive
of nuclear power are people
who live closest to
nuclear power plants.
Despite what I sort
of showed you, right?
And it goes to the fact
that generally speaking,
unless mishandled, we can handle
the hazardous waste problem
with nuclear power,
and the probability
of an accident is
actually pretty low,
and people who live near
these plants understand
that a lot better
than let's say people
who are thinking the abstract.
So we don't have
direct evidence to that,
and our interest is more
assertive these national
surveys, but there is some
evidence that those can work
in different directions,
I guess.
Yeah.
>> Another question.
Go ahead.
>> Yeah, thanks so much for
sharing this great research.
So I was actually optimistic
with all the results you showed
about how the harms matter
more and people love renewables
and all that stuff, and
I'd actually worked a lot
on the Beyond Coal Campaign
in Indianapolis that shut
down the Harding Street
plant there, and, of course,
that plants being replaced
with natural gas, just like all
of the coal plants are, and so
that's where a more pessimistic,
and I'm wondering, you know,
you talked about the stability
of your results, but that
would seem to be the area
where there's the most
movement is growing,
people who want more natural
gas increasing over time
and may be consistent
with your model,
it seemed like people thought
that the costs were going down
and the harms we're
going down somehow,
and so I'm wondering what
you thought about that,
and if there's something
behind those changes.
Maybe that takes you
outside of your data,
but just why people think
harms are going down,
and if that's just because
people have natural gas
or what it might be.
>> Right. So actually
drove by that Harding plant
on my way up, yeah, yesterday.
So going back to the
conceptual framework, right?
So if what matters are
local environmental harms
and secondarily perception of
costs in particular, right?
So one thing that we've
seen over the past decade is
that the cost of natural gas has
come down significantly, right?
Particularly compared to
when we started this in 2002,
which is pre-fracking,
the shale gas revolution,
we use that term, right?
So people are beginning to
understand that and it factors
into their preferences, right,
which actually increases
the weight people put on it
because I think it's
more salient,
because it's more in their face.
They're learning
about it as we speak.
They're probably also
learning about, at least,
comparing natural
gas to coal, right?
And, you know, whatever you
think about natural gas,
as compared to coal,
it's a cleaner way
of generating electricity.
I think the concerns
people have is
that the natural gas boom is
crowding out renewables, right?
And that's not something
we directly get to.
You can only indirectly
get to it.
So, you know, that's sort
of a longer-term question,
but if the framework is right,
and what matters are perceptions
or harms, I think people
understand natural gas already.
So you're not going to get much
more bang for your buck in terms
of changing people's impressions
of the harms, but the cost,
that's what's changing, and
that's going to bump up support
for natural gas, which
leads to them replacing it
with natural gas as opposed
to just a full-out
retirement, right?
Yeah.
>> Thanks again for coming out.
It's really interesting.
I was curious in terms of sort
of the mechanisms of the survey.
When you have sort of the
hypothetical scenarios
where people seem to be more
concerned with harm than cost,
how do you transition
into something that sort
of solidifies that cost
more with a carbon tax,
and you pitch it to, you know,
whoever is taking the survey
as forcing them to
internalize the cost
of the harm at that point?
How do you differentiate between
sort of aversion to that sort
of internalization of the
harm, versus, you know,
aversion to the framing
of climate policy?
How do you sort of hone in on
that was the key sticking point
for those people versus the fact
that they were now being asked
to sort of visualize
the cost in a way
that they were going
to pay for it?
>> It's a good question.
So we, I think this in part
explains why there's a lot
of variance around survey
work on carbon taxes,
because a lot depends
on how direct you make
the cost to people, right?
So, and stuff I didn't
show you, we did a bunch
of survey experiments where we
made the cost much more direct
on people by either
increasing the cost of gasoline,
which is the way most people
directly consume energy.
They know more about
the gasoline prices
than they do even their own
electricity bills, for example,
but also their electricity bill.
So actually, the prices people
pay, and people, like you say,
are not very enthusiastic
about paying more for any
of those things, right?
So there, the cost is being
directly shown to them,
demonstrated, as opposed
to some of the work we did
and others have done
on carbon tax.
When you talk about that
revenue either being given back
to consumers through some sort
of tax swap or three dividend
of sorts or invested in clean
energy or things like that,
you tend to get a little bit
of a higher bang for your buck.
I think because people are not
realizing, at least directly,
that they're going
to be actually paying
those surcharges, right?
So this is, I don't think,
unique to carbon tax.
This is true of probably
most sort of taxes
in general, use taxes, right?
People are really resistant
to paying the cost of this,
and I think it's safe to
say that also explains some
of the support for regulation,
because people don't fully
recognize that just because,
I mean, we're regulating,
your costs are going to go up,
at least in the short term, but
it's a less direct connection
to get the mechanism,
as you're suggesting.
So I think that's a
big part of the story.
>> So, two questions.
First one really quick.
I was surprised about
the Fukushima didn't show
up in the nuclear
point, and then secondly,
as far as the costs go, there
is some current costs with,
like, solar.
I know there's a
feature, expected cost,
and then when I think about
my desire to use solar,
I know it's expensive now,
the cost will go down.
Whereas nuclear and
coal probably won't.
Did you see that in the data?
>> Right, so on your
first point, on Fukushima.
So this is reflected in our
survey work, as well as others.
There was a short, at
least in the United States,
there is a short-term decline
in support for nuclear power
after Fukushima that basically
dissipated quickly thereafter,
which is quite surprising
given how much media coverage
that accident got, but we didn't
see the kind of response here
that you saw in Germany.
Right? They really moved
away from nuclear power,
even to go towards
coal as an alternative,
and so it really did not
register much of an effect
on U.S. opinion on
nuclear power.
This is very different than
the case of Three Mile Island,
which happened in the
late 1970s, where support
for nuclear power
declined pretty quickly
and never really
recovered after that.
So that's just, empirically,
that's sort of the story.
Been different cross nationally.
At least, in the United States,
it didn't have much
of an effect.
On your second question
about cost, right?
So I think it's a good question.
I mean, I think one
thing that's clear is
that people have a misperception
about the cost of renewables,
and we're trying to get
people to think about today.
So, like, what the current
situation is, right?
Not so much about
expectations of the future,
but it's certainly possible
that people are thinking
about the future when
they're responding
to survey questions, right?
I think what gives
us some confidence
that that's not happening, or at
least it's not driving results,
is the survey experiments
where we actually can
control the information
that they're getting, or at
least in the short term, right?
And we can sort of see a shift
in just those getting
information, right,
compared to that control.
So it gives us some confidence
that it's working the way we
expect, but this is both a fun
and challenging thing
about studying
in such a fast-moving
area, right,
is that solar costs are a lot
different now than they were
when we began this
in 2002, right?
And in some places,
because of policy,
it's actually reached parity
with coal and natural gas,
right, because of policy.
So are people factoring
that into their perceptions?
I don't think much,
because I think level
of knowledge is pretty low
still, but for some perhaps.
Some of that is responsive,
but that's kind of how,
yeah, we think about it.
>> Thanks for your talk.
I just had a question about
energy efficiency and whether
or not you [inaudible] or,
you know, there are changes
in the attitudes or
values with that?
>> Yeah, so we did
not look at this.
So I can't speak to our data
because we didn't ask
any questions, at least,
that wasn't part of our core
analysis, but others have asked
about energy efficiency.
People are generally
enthusiastic
about energy efficiency.
There's actually some polling
going back to the 1970s
from the oil crisis about energy
efficiency, and, you know,
the public, generally,
at that time,
and I think it's still true
today, were very supportive
of sort of it in principle.
The question is how do
you implement it, right?
From a policy standpoint,
I think we know less,
whether it be a mandate
or something else,
but generally speaking,
people are comfortable
with energy efficiency if the
mandates are being placed on,
let's say, people who
manufacture appliances, right?
Or more efficient cars.
I think, because,
again, it goes back
to this question about cost.
People are not recognizing that
that might increase their costs.
So I can't say much
more on that,
but that's kind of what I know.
>> Go ahead, and then --
>> Sure.
>> My question is about
the, excuse me, the methods.
Your survey methods and
who you were talking to.
I'm wondering, in part,
whether this is, like,
how big the samples were and
whether they're representative
of people across the country
but also whether, I know a lot
of surveys underrepresent
young people
because they don't
have [inaudible],
and so those graphs might
look very different in 15
or 20 years, because you're not
talking to some of those folks.
So I'm wondering, and also, sort
of voters versus non-voters,
different regions
of the country.
Can you speak a little
bit about those tactics?
>> Sure. So the surveys we
did were all Internet surveys,
but not getting too
far in the weeds,
most of the surveys were done
by a firm called
Knowledge Networks.
They sense a change names.
I forget their new name, which
their basic method is to,
they randomly contact folks
through random digit dialing.
They identify folks to
respond to their surveys.
They've created a massive,
online sample of a couple
of million people, and then they
draw random samples from that,
and you can weight it so it
reflects the characteristics
of the national population.
So these surveys are all
done of adults, 18 plus,
voters and nonvoters alike,
and they are done in a way,
as long as the sampling is done
correctly, to be representative
of the public at large.
The way that this
particular company deals
with the digital divide issue is
that they essentially
give Internet access free
to those who don't have it.
So they're capturing that
segment of the population,
which in 2002 was much
larger than it is today,
that didn't have Internet.
Different than the cell phone
question, which is more relevant
if you're doing telephone
surveys.
People are less frequently
doing telephone surveys
for that reason.
The cohort effect is a really
interesting one, right?
So we are capturing, you know,
the population as it stands,
in terms of composition
across age, right?
But it could be, and
we do control for age.
We control for region,
all those kinds of things.
So I don't think it's driving
the results, but it could be
that preferences differ in
some parts of the country
and for some ages,
and over time,
as those folks become a
larger part of the sample,
you might get to
different kinds of results.
So just, for example,
young people tend
to be less enthusiastic
about nuclear power, right?
So over time, if that continues,
you might have something
that looks even different
on nuclear power,
but these polls were
designed to be reflective
of the U.S. population, as it is
at any given time in the survey.
>> Assuming that people's
preferences stay relatively
flat, based on their -- can you
make any reasonable predictions
about what those charts will
look like in 10 or 15 years,
just based on new demographics,
which is cohorts moving up?
>> Yeah, I guess I would think
about it a little differently?
Because overall,
the demographics are not playing
a big part of the story, right?
The big driving factors here
are people's perceptions
of these energy attributes,
right?
So I guess my response would
be these attributes are going
to change.
Perceptions are going to
change as things develop
in the marketplace, right?
So, for example, as the cost
of solar and wind power come
down because of technology
improvements,
we should see even
more enthusiasm, right?
If at the same time, if we
were able to ever figure
out carbon capture and
storage technology,
that is a way to
make coal cleaner.
You might actually see
rising support for coal.
So it's, on those
two dimensions,
making things cleaner or
driving the cost down,
as the market produces
improvements or changes
in those factors or other market
conditions change generally,
as we're seeing with natural
gas, that's what I would expect
to shift people's preferences
over the long-term, but,
you know, the age, party,
region are just not playing,
they're not big factors
in our analysis.
So you might find some
cohort kind of effects,
but I think they're kind
of on the margins compared
to these other things.
>> Thank you.
>> Yeah.
>> You've got a question
back there.
>> You just mentioned
party affiliation.
I'm wondering how that
affects the lack of popularity
for carbon tax, if that
was measured at all,
and then the second question
about The Carbon Tax was,
use the word efficiency.
I heard the word
efficiency a couple of times
and comparing carbon
tax to policy.
I'm wondering about
effectiveness as opposed
to efficiency, how those differ.
>> Right, and so when I was
thinking about efficiency,
it was sort of in the
textbook way, right?
So as people design
a carbon tax or think
about designing carbon
taxes or even cap-and-trade,
in terms of efficiency, what
I have in mind is the fact
that you can achieve the
same level of reductions
in whatever you're targeting.
In this case, carbon
dioxide or greenhouse gases,
at a lower cost, right?
The whole idea of the carbon
tax or cap-and-trade is
that reductions occur in
places worth less costly
to do so, right?
And for CO2, you don't care
where those actually
occur geographically.
So that's what I
meant by efficiency.
The ease of implementation
is a little trickier
because we don't have lots
of examples of carbon taxes.
There are a handful across the
world, but nothing on the scale
of an economy the size
of the United States.
So I think that's mostly
a conceptual thing.
We also know the answer to
that, but people who thought
about the design of carbon
taxes, you know, you can sort
of put them up stream in a way
that they're not
intrusive on consumers.
They'll pay the cost,
but the implementation is
pretty straightforward.
Your first question was about?
>> My first question was
about party differences
in the popularity or --
>> Right, so everything
I showed you controls
for both political
party identification,
as well as political ideology,
and they're just
not driving factors.
Once you control for people's
perceptions of harms and costs
in these energy attitudes.
On the carbon tax, specifically,
you know, there is a divide.
There is a divide, actually,
on all those policy
instruments by party.
It's less true on regulation
though, and this has been borne
out as we speak on things like
the EPA's Clean Power Plan,
where the majorities of both
parties generally express
support for that kind of an
approach, and not surprisingly,
that's why the administration
has been advocating this kind
of approach, right?
Because the public is at
least less objective to it.
I mean, they're objecting less,
but there's actually
pretty good support.
>> One last question.
>> I'm wondering what the
messaging of the proposal
for the cap-and-trade
was back in 2009/2010.
If that played a part in why
that didn't get [inaudible]
or if there was another kind
of primary reason why
that didn't happen.
>> Great question.
There's actually been several
different, lots of different,
sort of retrospective
analyses as to what happened
with that piece of legislation,
and in general narrative
you hear, or people think,
is that President Obama had to
make a choice between healthcare
and climate and he
chose healthcare
and put his personal weight
behind it, but on messaging,
you know, I think what
you saw, it was presented
as climate policy,
not the energy policy.
That's fair.
Barry might disagree.
But moreover, opponents,
they didn't actually
even say cap-and-trade.
They said cap-and-tax, right?
And they're looking
at numbers like this
from their own internal focus
groups and polling and know
that a tax is not very
highly supported, right?
So the message was to really
make this about climate policy,
rather than something else.
I think the distinction is
looking how the EPA has unrolled
or unveiled the Clean Power
Plant, which again, is basically
about climate change, but
they tend to use frames more
about public health, a
little bit about cost,
trying to alleviate
people's concerns.
Is this going to lead to
really high electricity prices?
I guess mixed assess, and even
when they talk about carbon,
they say carbon pollution.
That's not by accident, right?
I mean, they're using the word
pollution, because people don't
like pollution, and it's easier
to generate support doing
something about it rather
than thinking about climate
change or sea-level rise
or warmer temperatures
or things like that.
So think you are seeing a
change over time in how folks
in the administration, the
EPA, and Washington are trying
to talk about this issue.
>> All right, we
have run out of time.
Please join me again
and thanking.
>> Thank you.
[ Applause ]
