Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-2015
Keywords
sustainability, fiscal capacity, environment
Abstract
Sustainability policymaking presents numerous challenges to local governments. Municipal leaders, especially in smaller cities and towns, report that they lack the fiscal capacity and/or technical expertise to adopt many environmental protection policies. This paper investigates whether the more than 2,000 municipally-owned utilities have the potential to mitigate those problems. Data from two surveys of local governments in the United States (n=861), modeled in a pair of negative binomial regressions, finds a positive correlation between those cities with municipal power companies and those with an increased number of community-wide sustainable energy policies. Follow-up interviews with officials reveal the potential mechanisms driving sustainability by local governments that own power companies. These mechanisms are the increased capacity that publicly-owned utilities provide by virtue of income generated and access to energy-specific grants as well as the local nature of their operations, which allows a better fit of sustainable energy measures to local circumstances.
Publisher Attribution
The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, Vol.34(6), 2015. published by SAGE Publishing, All rights reserved.
Homsy, G. C. (2015). Powering sustainability: Municipal utilities and local government policymaking. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space,34(6), 1076 - 1094. doi: 10.1177/0263774X15596530
Recommended Citation
Homsy, George C., "Powering sustainability: municipal utilities and local government policymaking" (2015). Public Administration Faculty Scholarship. 19.
https://orb.binghamton.edu/public_admin_fac/19