Doug Bessette, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Community Sustainability, Michigan State University
By Kyle Davidson
With the conclusion of the United Nations Climate Change conference (COP 28) last week, negotiators brokered a deal calling for a global expansion of renewable energy, improved energy efficiency and a transition away from fossil fuels…
By Nicole Pollack
At the tail end of the aughts, as it became clear that the United States would need to create much more renewable energy, fast, many believed the transition would be bolstered by the proliferation of offshore wind. But not off the coasts of states like Massachusetts and California, where it’s best positioned today. They thought the industry would emerge, and then take hold, in the Great Lakes.
Things looked promising for a while. Glimmers of an offshore wind boom arose from the depths of the Great Recession, as developers offered up proposals on both the U.S. and Canadian sides of the lakes. In 2010, the Cleveland-based Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation, better known as LEEDCo, announced plans to install its first 20 megawatts by 2012 and scale up to 1,000 megawatts by 2020. Two years later, the Obama administration and five states—though not Ohio—formed the Great Lakes Offshore Wind Consortium to help streamline the permitting process…
By Rachel Just
DETROIT, Mich. — Michigan has officially set new goals to embrace renewable, clean energy in the coming decades.
The plan, deemed “Michigan Jobs, Michigan Energy” by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, puts into law portions of her “MI Clean Energy Future” plan, which aims to put the Great Lakes State ahead of its neighbors in pursuing clean energy.
“Our 100% clean energy standard will make Michigan a national leader: top five nationwide and number one in the Midwest,” Whitmer told a large crowd gathered at Detroit’s Eastern Market for a bill signing event on Tuesday. “We already knew we were the best, it’s about time the rest of them figured it out. Let’s make it official.”
Whitmer signed seven bills Tuesday, which include ambitions from Whitmer’s priorities that became more pared down during the legislative process this fall.
Goals of the plan include 50% renewable energy by 2030 and 100% clean energy by 2040.
“I would say the goals are very ambitious. But I think that’s part of the strategy, is to set very ambitious goals and hope for the best,” said Doug Bessette, an associate professor in the Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University.
Bessette, whose work focuses on clean energy and the energy transition, says he believes Michigan can reach the goals it’s set forth, but it may take a while to accelerate to the major changes it’ll require.
Friday, November 10th, 2023. (Draft Version! More figures to come!)
Per the NY Times, a bundle of clean energy bills in Michigan were given final approval in the Senate on Wednesday that would move the state closer to net zero. The bills would require the state to “generate all of its electricity from wind, solar and other carbon-free sources by 2040” and “streamline permits for new wind and solar power” by preempting local control and placing permitting authority for large-scale wind and solar farms in the hands of the Michigan Public Service Commission. The Times reports that Governor Whitmer said “support for the legislation has grown” in Michigan.
But data from Michigan State University’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (IPPSR), in particular data from the State of the State Survey (SOSS), a representative public opinion survey of Michigan residents, shows the opposite.
Six years ago, in 2017, SOSS questions asked by Professors Sharlissa Moore and Annick Anctil, both then at MSU (Dr. Anctil remains at MSU), showed that 84% of Michigan residents supported “more wind construction” in the state and 88% supported “more solar construction.”* While in 2017 more Democrats and urban residents supported the construction of renewables than did Republicans and rural residents, all demonstrated consistently high support.
That same survey deployed 7 months ago, in April of 2023, now with questions I asked, showed that support for wind and solar projects has declined considerably. Now only 57% of Michigan residents support more “wind power development,” and support for more “solar power development” has declined to 63%. These aren’t small shifts, but instead pretty clear movement in the direction opposite from what the Governor argued.
But maybe the Governor meant support for these types of projects has grown amongst her party, i.e., the Democrats, rather than with the Republicans. Here she’s got an argument, at least with regard to solar. In 2023, 97% of Democrats support “more solar power development in Michigan,” up from 93% in 2017. But support for wind amongst Democrats has actually dipped a bit since 2017. Only 82% of Democrats now support “more wind power development,” compared to 92% who supported more wind construction back in 2017.
What about Republicans? Well, here we see precipitous drops in support. In 2023, Republicans’ support for more solar power development dipped to just 39% and their support for more wind development dropped even further, to just under a third, or 30%.
Michigan’s rural-urban divide has likely widened since 2017, as my colleagues and I consistently hear concerns from neighbors of projects about where the electricity generated by them goes. These concerns pretty clearly contribute to increased opposition in rural parts of this state and others. So how does support for wind and solar differ between rural and urban residents in Michigan in 2023? Well, considerably. 71% of urban residents support more solar development and 64% of city-dwellers support more wind development in Michigan, while only 57% of rural residents support more solar and 45% support more wind.
But these numbers don’t tell the whole story. Those of us that study support for renewables examine something called the “social gap.” The social gap, identified over 2 decades ago by Bell and colleagues, refers to the difference between what is typically high public support for renewable projects presented in the abstract, often on large surveys like the SOSS, and what is often (much) lower support amongst residents for real projects either being proposed or built in one’s own community.
I couldn’t get around the fact that I’m still asking survey questions, but I could–and did–ask Michigan residents in 2023 about their support for wind turbines or solar farms that would be visible from their residence. It should come as no surprise that support for these projects was considerably lower across the board and the divide between Democrats and Republicans and rural and urban residents remained.
…more to come…
*Any time I have written “support” above I am combining responses from individuals who either “somewhat” or “strongly” supported a technology.
Green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) promises to improve stormwater management while making landscapes more sustainable. The ability of GSI to achieve water quality objectives and provide socioeconomic cobenefits depends in part on public perceptions and support. This study contributes to the literature on public perceptions of top-down, municipal-scale GSI. We examined variation in public support for planned rain gardens and the factors associated with support in a large Midwestern city in the US. We collected survey data (𝑁=588) in two socioeconomically distinct neighborhoods and fit multivariate linear regression models to explore how variables derived from economics, landscape ecology, and outreach and engagement literatures impact support. There was little difference in support between neighborhoods. The expectation of increased property values and improved neighborhood appearance, alignment with personal norms and experience with conservation landscaping, and satisfaction with outreach and engagement programs were significantly associated with higher support. In addition, strong neighborhood identity magnified the effects of several variables. These results suggest that planners should work with communities to identify rain garden designs and locations that balance functionality with aesthetic preferences to minimize potential negative socioeconomic effects while meeting stormwater management objectives. Proactive community engagement that is attentive to local norms and values and identifies appropriate rain garden maintenance plans could improve the long-term effectiveness of GSI by increasing the likelihood of local support.
Access to electricity is essential to improving quality of life. The goal of this study is to understand how different types of electricity access affect time use between men and women and identify the everyday activities where electricity may have the greatest impact on women’s quality of life. Using the World Bank’s Multi-Tier Framework (MTF) dataset for Zambia, we apply a Tobit model to examine how male and female household members allocate their time among different activities and the impact of different types of electric connections on those allocations. Our results show that compared to households without electricity, off-grid connections significantly increase women’s time in paid work, more so than grid connections, while grid connections significantly increase the time both men and women spend listening to the radio and watching television. These activities have been shown to be key to empowering women through exposure to women in emancipated roles, decreased fertility rates, lower acceptance of intimate partner violence, and increased shares of divorce and separation. Off-grid connected households showed no difference in television or radio time and increased time in energy-related activities for both men and women compared to households without electricity. These results suggest that efforts to expand grid-connected and off-grid electricity may have different effects on women’s quality of life.
Most studies examining community acceptance of renewables have been based on cross-sectional rather than longitudinal data (Ellis et al, 2023). Here we pursue the latter by comparing the results of two representative surveys distributed in Michigan, the first, an IPPSR State of the State Survey (SOSS) from Fall 2017 (+/- 3.9% margin of error) (see Anctil & Moore, 2018) and the second, a YouGov (SOSS) survey from Spring 2023. Below we share some intriguing trends in what appears to be dramatically reduced support for continued renewable development:
In 2017, 91% of residents supported more solar power development in Michigan. In 2023, only 63% of residents still support more solar power development.
In 2017, 87% of residents supported more wind development in Michigan. In 2023? Only 55% still support further wind development.
Offshore wind in the Great Lakes? In 2017, 76% of residents supported offshore wind turbine development in the Great Lakes not visible from the shoreline. In 2023? Only 50%. Those numbers drop further with respect to offshore wind turbines that would be visible from shore. In 2017, 58% were in support. In 2023, only 38%.
What about electric vehicles? Surely demand for EVs has increased! In 2017, 49% of Michigan residents said that if they could afford one, they would consider purchasing a fully electric vehicle as their next car. In 2023? Only 36% agreed.
Some good news? (Maybe?) In 2017, 73% of Michigan residents supported major increases in the use of natural gas to generate electricity. In 2023, only 39% continue to support such increases.
More to come…
See Michigan State University’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research for more information about each survey.
In Michigan (and elsewhere), rural residents, where nearly all large-scale solar and wind development occurs, consistently support renewable development less than do small town, suburban and urban residents, our new data via a 2023 YouGov survey (n = 1000) show. What’s perhaps more telling, when we look at the granular level, at solar and wind being developed within view of people’s residence–and thus a far more significant impact to their viewshed, support declines further, and more precipitously in rural communities.
But what about politics? Do Republicans support renewable development less than democrats?
No surprise here…Yep!
More to come…
Energies2022, 15(22), 8648; https://doi.org/10.3390/en15228648
Battery electric tractors (BETs) demonstrate considerable advantages over diesel-fueled tractors, including higher conversion efficiency, higher torque, less maintenance, and no tailpipe emissions. Converting to BETs also requires tradeoffs in the form of the batteries’ high cost, increased weight, limited energy capacity, finite charging cycles, and lengthy charging time. The extent to which small-scale organic vegetable, fruit and cut-flower growers are aware of these tradeoffs is unknown. Little research exists examining these growers’ perceptions, concerns, and willingness to pay for or adopt BETs. Here, we address that gap by conducting qualitative semi-structured interviews with 14 organic growers in the US Midwest, most operating in Michigan. We focus our questions on growers’ motivations, existing tractor-use patterns, and the evaluation of different configurations of a belly-mount open-station cultivating BET. Our results suggest interest in and potential for growers to transition to BETs, including an estimated willingness to pay 14 percent more for a BET compared to a diesel-fueled alternative. This premium is driven by most growers’ preferences for reduced noise, fumes, fuel, and greenhouse gases, as well as beliefs about BETs ultimately being a more sustainable long-term option than diesel-fueled tractors. Growers also identify significant concerns and uncertainty about the long-term performance, maintenance, storage, cost, safety, and weight of the tractors’ battery systems. While growers linked some environmental values and motivations to their interest in BETs, altruistic value signaling was absent, and growers focused considerably more on financial and instrumental concerns and motivations for BET adoption.
Energy Values Lab 