Implementing Climate Policy and Renewable Energy Technology – The Role of Lobbying

Climate Change has become an increasingly discussed issue in the United States and around the world. Despite levels of support of over 60% in all states, very little action has been taken on this front in the United States. Understanding how to effectively implement renewable energy technology and climate policy will be vital for moving climate legislation forwards in coming years. This thesis analyzes the role that fossil fuel companies play in lobbying on climate legislation, and uses theoretical models of lobbying to categorize the behavior of the companies. Overall, lobbying was found to be skewed heavily towards the poles of climate opinion, namely those heavily in favor and heavily against climate policy legislation. It is found that lobbying expenditures from the largest oil and gas companies in the United States were related to the voting behavior of members of Congress from 2012-2020. Voting consistently against climate legislation was found to be a strong indicator for being lobbied by oil and gas companies. Members of Congress with anti-climate voting behavior were over two times as likely to experience lobbying. K-means clustering and PCA analyses also confirmed this, showing lobbying to be one of the largest predictors for categorizing behavior in Congress.

Name thesis:degree_name

Bachelor

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• Guettler, Darya C.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Caughey, Devin

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
• Copyright MIT

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/140355

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/140355