Examine finds assist for photo voltaic power has grow to be politically polarized
by Matt Shipman
Raleigh NC (SPX) Mar 10, 2025
A brand new evaluation of social media posts finds public assist for photo voltaic power stays excessive, although that assist declined considerably from 2016 to 2022. The examine additionally discovered solar energy has grow to be an more and more polarized concern, with the shift in assist being pushed largely by opposition to solar energy amongst folks in areas that lean Republican.
“The U.S. noticed important development within the photo voltaic power sector between 2013 and 2022, however that development has not been unfold evenly throughout the nation – some areas have seen extra deployment of photo voltaic power applied sciences than different areas,” says Serena Kim, corresponding creator of the examine and an assistant professor of public administration at North Carolina State College. “We needed to evaluate attitudes towards photo voltaic power at each the native and regional stage, in addition to how these attitudes have modified over time.
“These attitudes can affect insurance policies which have a big influence on sustainable power, and our findings recommend that attitudes are largely being pushed by politics,” Kim says.
For this examine, the researchers collected greater than 8 million posts associated to photo voltaic power from the social media platform beforehand often known as Twitter, spanning the years 2013-2022. These posts are from customers who had included location knowledge on their public-facing accounts.
The researchers then used analytical instruments to characterize the sentiment of every publish as constructive, unfavorable or impartial towards photo voltaic power.
“We discovered {that a} majority of individuals assist photo voltaic power efforts – that has not modified,” Kim says. “Nevertheless, that majority shrank fairly a bit.”
Assist for photo voltaic power peaked in 2016, with 65% of posts conveying a constructive sentiment towards photo voltaic power, whereas solely 7% have been unfavorable. By 2022, 58% of posts have been constructive, and the variety of unfavorable posts had elevated to twenty-eight.4%.
“One of many telling findings right here is that the proportion of impartial posts decreased from 41.9% in 2016 to 13.3% in 2022,” Kim says. “This tells us that sentiment towards photo voltaic power has grow to be considerably extra polarized.”
The researchers additionally discovered large variations in assist for solar energy from state to state. On common, the 5 states that have been most constructive towards photo voltaic power between 2013 and 2022 have been Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, New Mexico and Colorado. The 5 states that have been most unfavorable towards solar energy have been Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Idaho and North Dakota.
“Along with regional variations, we additionally discovered important variations over time related to an space’s political preferences,” Kim says. “For instance, in 2016, assist for solar energy in Republican-leaning municipalities was solely 2% decrease than that in Democratic-leaning municipalities. However by 2022, assist for solar energy in Republican municipalities was 30% decrease.
“If we’re curious about increasing cleaner and decentralized power sources, we have to perceive public sentiment towards applied sciences like photo voltaic power,” Kim says. “This work is a step in that route, providing perception into how that sentiment is altering – and strategies as to what’s driving that change.”
The researchers have made city- and state-level knowledge on public perceptions of photo voltaic power publicly out there at https://solarsentiment.org.
Sentiment Evaluation of Photo voltaic Power in U.S. Cities: A ten-12 months Evaluation Utilizing Transformer-Based mostly Deep Studying
Associated Hyperlinks
Trending Merchandise
