Support for Solar Energy Has Become Politically Polarized
A recent analysis of social media posts reveals that public support for solar energy remains high, although it has significantly declined from 2016 to 2022. The study indicates that solar power has increasingly become a polarized issue, particularly due to growing opposition among individuals in regions that lean Republican.
According to Serena Kim, the study’s corresponding author and an assistant professor of public administration at North Carolina State University, “The U.S. experienced substantial growth in the solar energy sector between 2013 and 2022, but this growth has not been uniform across the country. Some areas have embraced solar technologies more than others.”
The researchers aimed to evaluate attitudes toward solar energy at both local and regional levels, as well as to understand how these attitudes have evolved over time. Kim noted, “These attitudes can significantly influence policies that impact sustainable energy, and our findings suggest that political factors largely drive these attitudes.”
For this study, the researchers analyzed over 8 million posts related to solar energy collected from the social media platform formerly known as Twitter between 2013 and 2022. The posts were sourced from users who had included location data on their public accounts. Analytical tools were employed to categorize the sentiment of each post as positive, negative, or neutral concerning solar energy.
“We found that a majority of people continue to support solar energy efforts, which has remained consistent,” Kim stated. “However, that majority has diminished considerably.” Support for solar energy peaked in 2016, with 65% of posts expressing a positive sentiment, while only 7% conveyed negativity. By 2022, positive posts had decreased to 58%, and negative posts rose to 28.4%.
A striking finding of the study was the decline in neutral posts, which fell from 41.9% in 2016 to 13.3% in 2022. Kim explained, “This indicates that sentiment toward solar energy has become significantly more polarized.”
The researchers also observed substantial variations in support for solar power from state to state. The five states with the highest positive sentiment toward solar energy between 2013 and 2022 were Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, New Mexico, and Colorado. Conversely, the states with the most negative sentiments were Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Idaho, and North Dakota.
“In addition to regional discrepancies, we identified significant temporal differences linked to political preferences in various areas,” Kim noted. “For instance, in 2016, support for solar power in Republican-leaning municipalities was just 2% lower than in Democratic-leaning ones. However, by 2022, support in Republican municipalities was 30% lower.”
Kim concluded, “To expand cleaner and decentralized energy resources, it is crucial to comprehend public sentiment regarding technologies like solar energy. This study is a step toward that understanding, providing insights into how sentiments are changing and what factors may be influencing this shift.”
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