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How to save energy from partisan politics

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Can the clean power transition survive partisan politics?

If anyone has the answer, it's David Spence, Professor of Energy Law & Regulation at UT Austin and author of the book "Climate of Contempt: How to Rescue the U.S. Energy Transition from Voter Partisanship."

Today on Power Perspectives, David breaks down the impacts of political polarization on climate and energy policy, the role of media in shaping public perception, and how the power industry moves forward in fractured times. If you've ever felt frustrated by dinner table politics conversations, give this episode a listen—guarantee you'll learn something valuable.

 

Prefer to Read vs. Listening? Scroll Down to Read Transcript

Want to watch the conversation? Video of Power Perspectives are now being posted to YouTube

 

Thanks to the sponsor of this episode of the Power Perspectives: West Monroe

Key Links:

David Spence's profile on Energy Central: https://energycentral.com/member/profile/david-spence

Climate of Contempt: How to Rescue the U.S. Energy Transition from Voter Partisanship: https://bookshop.org/p/books/climate-of-contempt-how-to-rescue-the-u-s-energy-transition-from-voter-partisanship-david-spence/21116536?ean=9780231217088&next=t

Ask a Question to Our Future Guests: Do you have a burning question for the utility executives and energy industry thought leaders that we feature each week on Power Perspectives? Leave us a message here for your chance to be featured in an upcoming episode: www.speakpipe.com/EnergyCentralPodcast 

 

 

TRANSCRIPT

Jason Price:

Climate change poses a profound challenge for humanity, yet the solutions are often entangled in political discord. As an industry and community, how can we move forward when our ability to craft effective climate policy is hindered by polarization and misinformation?

Today we're joined by David Spence, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of the recently published book, Climate of Contempt, How to Rescue the US Energy Transition from Voter Partisanship. In this book, David delves into the root causes of our political divide and offers insight into how these dynamics impact climate and energy policy.

In today's episode of Energy Essentials Power Perspectives podcast, we'll explore the role of misinformation, media influence, and how the decisions are made at the ballot box that shape our energy future. And importantly, David will share ideas on how we can bridge these divides and foster productive bipartisanship dialogue to address the climate crisis.

I'm Jason Price, your host. And coming to you from New York City and with me as always is Matt Chester, podcast producer and Energy Central's community manager from Orlando, Florida. Matt, how does Energy Central see political polarization affecting the conversations around climate and energy policy today?

 

Matt Chester:

Hey, Jason. Yeah, it's an important topic for sure. And generally speaking, is one of the more notable barriers to meaningful progress in climate and energy policy today. And we frankly, we do see this play out in different ways on the energy central community discussions. And while we take pride in our community and its members always remaining respectful and professional during these debates, the truth is that among our community, different people can see the same data, the same reports, the same news stories, and have somewhat different interpretations based on their unique biases, the perspectives they bring to the table, things like that. the risk when that happens is that the debates on those can get bogged down in the weeds of those interpretations, and that leaves us less room to focus on solutions. And that's what the collaborative endeavor of Energy Central is all about. So, I'm personally looking forward to hearing David's insights on how we can even better cut through the noise and build consensus on these critical issues.

 

Jason Price:

Yeah, thank you, Matt. And as are we. So, before we dive in, though, we just want to give a quick thank you to our sponsor of today's episode. Thank you to West Monroe. Now let's pull in today's guest that we're really excited to hear from. So, David Spence, I've loved diving into your book, and I'm even more excited to have these office hours with you on Power Perspectives. Thank you for joining us today.

 

David Spence:

Well, thanks, Jason. I'm happy to be here.

 

Jason Price:

Okay, so David, let's start with the central theme of the book, the impact of political polarization on climate policy. So, take us a step deeper into what your book is about and how did you come about to write an entire book on this?

 

David Spence:

Well, let's see, it was a long time coming. I for a long time had a sense that the dominant understanding and the dominant narratives in our political discussion about climate and energy policy were missing something important. Most of those frames are about sort of elite dominance and top-down control over the political process. And I thought we were under attending to the bottom-up aspects of our politics and the role of really angry and increasingly polarized voters on climate policy. And specifically, I think an important part of the story is the way that changes in our media environment or our information environment have made it a lot easier for lobbyists and politicians and political operatives and really anybody who wants to persuade us for their own purposes to get away with misleading us and making us more angry and insecure and fearful all the time. And so, I think that's also a big driver of extremism, ideological extremism between the parties. And frankly, as the title of my book implies, an increasing amount of contempt that each party has for the other. And so that's really what led me to want to write the book in the first place.

 

Jason Price:

All right. I appreciate that. I want to go a little further there. So, you talk about in the book and you're talking about it now is the role of media and how it's amplifying the polarization. I think none of us would find that surprising. Right. So how do you think the evolution of media, especially the rise of ideological sources and social media, how has it all shaped the conversation around energy and climate policy?

 

David Spence:

So, if you think about this as kind of a three-step process, we gather information that helps us form political beliefs or beliefs about policies, step one. Step two, we sort of take that information and talk about it or digest it socially. Most of us make decisions socially. We think about what other people would do and what our friends would do, and we don't make those decisions in a vacuum.

And thirdly, that becomes political behavior. We vote for particular people or we lobby and so forth. All of those stages have changed drastically as a result, well, in the last 50 years or so have changed drastically as a result of the changes in the media environment. So, when I was a kid, there were three national news networks and we got a nightly news story for only 30 minutes a day. We probably got it, most people probably got a daily paper, a local paper. Maybe you got a national paper, maybe you got a monthly news magazine like Newsweek or Time, something like that. All that information was prepared for us, written for us by trained journalists who at least aspired to objectivity and telling the complete story within the four corners of the story. They were writing for a broad audience ideologically and we had all the time in the world, well, not all the time, but a lot of time to digest that information because it wasn't coming at us all that often, daily in most cases. We could read a story to the end, to the 20th paragraph, where all of the complexity and qualifications and caveats are. And so, we were getting a very different picture of the news than we get in today's fast moving online environment where a lot of news is sort of censored. The news feeds are censored by algorithms based on what we click on. Moreover, when we get to step two of that process, we used to talk about the news we gathered face to face with our family, with our friends, with our coworkers, with our neighbors, with all the context that face-to-face communication involves. And that can include not just sort of facial expressions or that sort of thing, but also the knowledge of what the other person is like. I may know that if my neighbor knows absolutely nothing about the topic we're talking about, I may credit or discredit his opinion accordingly. And it was a slow process because these were existing relationships. We didn't want to damage them. We didn't open the conversation by saying anybody who thinks X is an idiot. We opened the conversation carefully and we asked, what do you think about this? And the whole process was slower, more careful, more iterative. Nowadays, we get the information all the time. We go online immediately. We talk to people who are part of our social media community. That too is likely to be censored. People we know from research leave social media communities that they feel aren't consistent with their views. And so those communities become sort of homogenous over time.

And so, people become too certain about too many things much too quickly in that new environment. And that's a problem. And so, the third step is that then they face a completely different electoral environment than we used to face. Nowadays, 80, 85 % of the members of Congress are representing safe seats, meaning that they face virtually no risk of losing the general election because their party is so numerically dominant in their district or state. And what that means is those members of Congress, in order to protect their re-election, worry not about the average voter in their district, but about the average voter in the primary for their party. And those voters are the ones that have become more ideologically extreme and angrier as a result of the tone and tenor and content of the media they consume.

That was a bit of a long-winded answer, but that's sort of the basic outline there.

 

Jason Price:

I want to go into your book for a moment. You talked about and you highlighted historical events that have influenced public perceptions of energy policy and how they've even influenced you. You talk about Three Mile Island as one of those sorts of, you know, pinnacle moments. Can you talk more about how these landmark moments continue to shape attitudes today and what lessons should policymakers and industry leaders take from them?

 

David Spence:

Yeah, I start right at the beginning of the book talking about the fact that I lived near Three Mile Island when it happened and when it melted down and how that initially sort of pushed me, and I was a college kid at the time, toward anti-nuclear activism, which is not a position I have anymore, but it got me interested in energy issues. And you know, I told my students just the other day that, you can see remnants of the mindset of that time in things like the Simpsons, right, which came about, you know, in the 1980s and has a particular depiction of the nuclear power industry, right? So these, what environmental lawyers or legal scholars would call catalyzing events, these big high profile events, which tend to be accidents like the Three Mile Island accident or the Cuyahoga River catching fire or the Santa Barbara oil spill or the Exxon Valdez oil spill or Fukushima, it goes on and on, right? So, these events shape how non-experts see these industries, right? And they have a really powerful effect on how people frame energy and environmental problems.

And so, we have to, as experts, help people develop sort of full pictures of these problems, issues, challenges. And one of the big objectives of my book is to try and fill out the picture of the energy transition as one that is not simply either you care about climate change or you don't, but rather a really difficult, complex problem that many people of goodwill want to push forward. And some people have, and many people of goodwill are a little bit nervous about because of its effect on the affordability of energy or the reliability of energy and how these trade-offs are really the important part of the problem. And we can only understand them by getting outside of this polarized political environment and diving into the nitty gritty.

 

Jason Price:

Okay. All right. also, another thing that stood out in the book that I want to explore a bit with us is this tension and sort of like this contradictory tension that goes on, you know, we've got these concerned climate change and yet we support a leader who seems to deny it how do you reconcile this? You talk about it in the book, but maybe you could sort of encapsulate it here for the audience. How do you talk about that in the book, Loris?

 

David Spence:

Well, one of the problems, so you're highlighting the idea that you can vote for somebody who holds a position that's very different from your own policy position. And there's a number of reasons why that happens. But one of them is sort of simple and almost mathematical. And that is that when we vote, we only have a binary choice, right? We vote for this candidate or that candidate. Or if you're a legislator, you vote yes on a piece of legislation or no, or yes on an amendment or no, when in reality, for all of those binary choices, we have all kinds of issues motivating the way we think about them, right? So, when it comes to voting for a candidate, if we are focusing on issues, there may be, you know, six, seven, eight, 10 issues that we're balancing when we think about that candidate.

And it may be that some of the people that vote for a presidential candidate whose views on the environment and on climate are very different than their own are actually thinking about other issues that are more important to them when they make that vote.

 

Jason Price:

So, you lay out the arguments in the book and all of it is incredibly compelling. And I enjoyed reading it, but it was also a bit dark, but you did lift us out of this darkness. So, there's turning points where we can learn from these severe discrepancies that you go into. So, I'd love for you to give us some examples of how these severe discrepancies became learning opportunities and opportunities where we could influence policy and change behaviors. Can you talk about some of those?

 

David Spence:

Yeah, think, I mean, certainly in the classroom, and I think it's true beyond the classroom, no matter how partisan or negatively partisan students are when they come into an energy, energy law class or energy policy class, they seem to a person to really appreciate diving into the complexity and getting exposed to fair and reasonable presentations of the opposing point of view.

When you get together with people from a different party or a different point of view, and you have extended conversations it turns out it's really, really rewarding. Most people really, really report feeling good about the fact that they now have a much deeper understanding of why these other people did something that they previously found incomprehensible. And it also helps them realize that the information they're getting and the news feeds that they're relying on are not necessarily serving them very well. And in the end, perhaps the most important thing that we can do is become much more discerning and careful consumers of news and much better about sort of helping our, forcing ourselves to socially process that news among a much broader set of people.

 

Jason Price:

Okay, I want to take us to the University of Texas, Austin. We're in your office. So, whether it's an Energy Central audience member or an undergraduate student, they come knocking on your door. They come with aspirations to make the world a better place. What's that conversation?

 

David Spence:

I think that is first of all, I think the premise of your question is true. I think a tremendous number of students these days and a lot of many people still want to make the world a better place. Uh, of the artifacts of polarization is that people develop wildly divergent notions of how you do that.

So, for example, I'll have students who identify as sort of progressive Democrats. They tend to view the problem of the energy transition and climate as something that ought to be fixed from the top down. And so, they might be sympathetic to the Green New Deal, for example, because the original Green New Deal called for sort of government ownership of a lot more energy resources than we have now. And when they get in deep conversation with someone who has a much more pro-market view and someone they know and someone they talk to repeatedly over the course of a semester, they'll get a better appreciation for why that person is more suspicious of government, how they'll hear stories about national oil companies in other countries and how poorly they're run, or counter examples that sort of challenge the assumptions they had in mind. And the opposite is true, right? The vice versa. The person who is the pro-market person will develop a much more sophisticated sense of what government's all about through these same kinds of iterated conversations.

These conversations can be productive, especially when they're face to face, frankly. mean, I think face to face or in social media communities that have much better norms of conversation than what we see in the big platforms.

 

Jason Price:

The president-elect is now president in full and is forming his cabinet. It's still taking shape, but you're an intellectual in this space. Looking ahead, what are some key risks and opportunities for climate and energy policy that you see coming in the next few years?

 

David Spence:

Yeah, you can sort of think of this two ways. One, the sort of traditional way would be to look at these appointees, think about Congress and sort of think about how the interaction of the executive and the legislative branch might change the laws on the books. And the energy secretary has an interesting background in that he's a fracking guy, but he's also a geothermal guy. And he seems inclined to want to build more infrastructure, including transmission, which can be good for clean energy if we build more transmission. that makes for an interesting speculation about what he and the FERC might do along those lines when it comes to exercising executive authority.

Clearly, they're going to pull back on a number of Biden initiatives in that respect. But the other way of thinking about this is to focus on the president and the sort of chaotic first few weeks we've had here and the sort of unilateral actions, some of which purport to change laws on the books or some of which will probably clearly be overturned by courts because they're illegal. But they signal a set of presidential priorities, which is to slow down renewable energy development and particularly wind development, offshore wind, but also solar and the executive order defining wind and solar outside of the definition of energy in terms of the energy emergency that he has declared. so obviously I think we can say with some confidence that this administration will be slowing parts of the energy transition. That doesn't mean they can stop it because a lot of it's driven by market forces. And wind and solar power is just cheap. And so here in Texas, which could not be a redder state, we have an interconnection cube full of solar energy and batteries and some wind and some gas, right?

 

Jason Price:

It's not just market forces, but also state, right?

 

David Spence:

Exactly. Yeah, we have states that are really pushing this along as well. We think now 10 or 12 states with a goal of net zero emissions by, you know, a few decades from now. And so state policies and corporate policies, too, there are corporations who are pledging to buy and procure net zero energy. And so, it's not going to stop the transition. But to the extent that the Biden administration was helping it along, pushing it along actually pretty, pretty hard with their policies.

A lot of that is going to be reversed. And I think some of the most interesting things to look at will be what happens in Congress. Will Congress be willing to repeal some or all of the Inflation Reduction Act? Or which parts will they repeal? These will be interesting questions. There still are, you know, 15 % of the members of the House that are in competitive districts, and many of them are Republicans.

Are they going to vote to repeal the IRA, which seems to be a popular statute? I don't know. We'll have to wait and

 

Jason Price:

Well, like I said, I really enjoyed your book. It was well put together, well-constructed and really provocative. So, I want to thank you for that. I also want to thank you for your time here, but I can't let you go just yet because we have what's called the lightning round, which is where we're in the show, we get to pivot to learn a little bit more about you, the person rather than you, the professor and the author and the professional. So, David, we're going to throw a series of questions at you. We asked you to keep your response to one word or phrase.

When political conversation gets too overwhelming, what's your favorite way to unplug?

 

David Spence:

Long walks.

 

Jason Price:

What's a hobby you wish you had more time for?

 

David Spence:

Playing the guitar.

 

Jason Price:

Who would you invite to your dream dinner party, past or present?

 

David Spence:

Let's say Frederick Douglass.

 

Jason Price:

We're collecting lightning round questions from past podcast guests to ask future guests. And just coincidentally in your book, there's a call out by Professor Amy Myers-Jaffe of NYU, my alma mater. And she was on the show and she asked the following question, which we're now she's going to be asking you. she says, what would you tell your 22 year old self about building a career in energy?

 

David Spence:

I wish my 22-year-old self was a little less confident that I knew everything about everything. I think, know, 22-year-old males, I probably wasn't that atypical, but I certainly, once I developed a little bit of expertise, which was a heady thing for me. And sometimes I thought I understood more than I actually understood. So intellectual humility, I guess, the value of that is what I would tell my 22 to yourself.

 

Jason Price:

Now it's your turn. What lightning round question would you want to challenge a future guest? And of course, David, this can be a topical question or it can be energy-related or it can be something that's completely off the wall.

 

David Spence:

Well, being so immersed in the politics of energy, going to suggest a question that's in that field, which is there are Republicans out there who care about climate and would like to see stronger climate policy? How can we create an environment in which they feel comfortable actually voting for that?

 

Jason Price:

So, we told you we'd give you the final word and thank you for handling the lightning round with such grace. So, knowing that our listeners are from the utility space, what is the key message you want the audience to take away? What do you hope they remember from today's conversation of nothing else?

 

David Spence:

Well, I mean, you referenced twice feeling like the book was dark, and I get that. Some other students have told me that as well, but I don't think of it that way. I think of the fact that we have a bottom-up problem as, you know, something to be understood and faced with and dealt with. I don't think it's hopeless. I think it's hopeful because I think the internet is new in the scope of American history, and we're going to get better at using it. And I think it's distortion it effects on our politics are going to become less severe over time once people become much more savvy about what it's doing to them. I think utility executives who are worried about polarization, you know, are going to be here for a while. But if we can get outside of that political context, partisan context and talk about real issues face to face, I think there's lots of reason for hope and lots of room for progress.

 

Jason Price:

Nicely, nicely stated. David, I would also take it maybe a step further. And that is that if you want to be a stakeholder in the outcome of this country, this is probably one of those books you should really consider reading, some very important lessons learned from this book that I took away from it. So, thank you again for sharing this with us. Thank you again for taking time out of your day. I know you're a busy professor, busy on campus, and we appreciate you coming on the show.

 

David Spence:

It's been my pleasure. I'm so glad you found the book useful and yeah, thanks for having me.

 

Jason Price:

Absolutely. And you can always reach David on the platform where he welcomes your questions and of course, we want to give a shout out of thanks to the sponsors that made today's episode possible.

Thanks to West Monroe. West Monroe is a leading partner for the nation's largest electric gas and water utilities. Working together to drive grid modernization, clean energy and workforce transformation, Western Rose comprehensive services are designed to support utilities in advancing their digital transformation, building resilient operations, securing federal funding and providing regulatory advisory roles offers a holistic approach that addresses the challenges of the grid today and provides innovative solutions for a sustainable future.

Once again, I'm your host, Jason Price. Plug in and stay fully charged in the discussion by hopping into the community at energycentral.com and we'll see you next time at the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast.

 

About Energy Central Podcasts

Power Perspectives features conversations with thought leaders in the utility sector. At least twice monthly, we connect with an Energy Central Power Industry Network community member to discuss compelling topics that impact professionals who work in the power industry. Some podcasts may be a continuation of thought-provoking posts or discussions started in the community or with an industry leader that is interested in sharing their expertise and doing a deeper dive into hot topics or issues relevant to the industry.

Power Perspectives is the premiere podcast series from Energy Central, a Power Industry Network of Communities built specifically for professionals in the electric power industry and a place where professionals can share, learn, and connect in a collaborative environment. Supported by leading industry organizations, our mission is to help global power industry professionals work better. Since 1995, we’ve been a trusted news and information source for professionals working in the power industry, and today our managed communities are a place for lively discussions, debates, and analysis to take place. If you’re not yet a member, visit www.EnergyCentral.com to register for free and join over 200,000 of your peers working in the power industry.

Power Perspectives is hosted by Jason Price, Community Ambassador of Energy Central. Jason is a Business Development Executive at West Monroe, working in the East Coast Energy and Utilities Group. Jason is joined in the podcast booth by the producer of the podcast, Matt Chester, who is also the Community Manager of Energy Central and energy analyst/independent consultant in energy policy, markets, and technology.  

If you want to be a guest on a future episode of Power Perspectives, let us know! We’ll be pulling guests from our community members who submit engaging content that gets our community talking, and perhaps that next guest will be you! Likewise, if you see an article submitted by a fellow Energy Central community member that you’d like to see broken down in more detail in a conversation, feel free to send us a note to nominate them.  For more information, contact us at [email protected]. Podcast interviews are free for Expert Members and professionals who work for a utility.  We have package offers available for solution providers and vendors. 

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