Research

  • US Renewable Energy Organized Opposition & Support Database

    Now Available!!! Below is the May 2025 version of the US Renewable Energy Organized Opposition & Support Database This dataset, which includes information on over 320 organizations or organized efforts working to either support or oppose renewable energy projects in the United States is a product of the Energy Values Lab in the Department of… Read more

  • Distributing a survey using Every Door Direct Mail in an ideal use case

    Excited to announce a new paper published in Methodological Innovations, led by CSUS MSc. graduate and Energy Values Lab member Jake White! While paper mail-based surveys avoid much of the risk of bots and fraudulent data, they suffer from lower response rates and ever-inflating material and logistical costs. In response, there is a nascent, but… Read more

  • CAREsolar Workshop in Zurich

    On Monday the 3rd of February, the CAREsolar workshop, Creating an updated conceptual framework on the socio-ecological impacts and community acceptance of large-scale solar, was held at ETH Zurich with the assistance of the Swiss Research Foundation for Electricity and Mobile Communication (FSM). The workshop brought together 20 experts and key stakeholders from Europe and… Read more

  • Community-Centered Solar Development

    Supporting Community-Centered Solar Development: A Guide to Hosting Community Conversations About Large-Scale Solar Development This guidebook helps community leaders, planners, developers, and residents facilitate proactive discussions about large-scale solar (LSS) development. As LSS projects grow rapidly across the U.S., these conversations ensure development aligns with local priorities and values. The guide provides a practical, eight-step… Read more

  • What to expect when you’re expecting engagement: Delivering procedural justice in large-scale solar energy deployment

    Props to Karl Hoesch for an excellent paper and the best title I’ve seen so far… Community engagement in the planning process to build large-scale solar (LSS) projects can win local support and advance procedural justice. However, an understanding of community engagement in current LSS development is lacking. Using responses from a U.S. nationwide survey… Read more

  • Partisan winds: Group-level polarization and issue-framing propel attitudes about local wind farms

    Political polarization is an obstacle to public support and effective communication for renewable energy projects. Depolarizing messages can be helpful, but it is difficult to determine where to concentrate efforts until social scientists first disentangle the effects of unconscious issue-based and conscious group norm-based polarization processes. This study investigates the extent to which attitudes towards… Read more