The Limits of Local Power: How Utilities, Infrastructure, and Markets Shape Local Sustainable Energy Policy-Making and the Climate Footprint of the Energy Syste

Energy is the single largest source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. To significantly mitigate global climate change, humanity must achieve a drastic reduction in the greenhouse gas intensity of the entire energy system, and quickly. Though a global or collection of national-level policies seems necessary to solve a collective action problem of this enormity, local solutions, at the state- and city-level, may need to play a significant role. This is particularly true in the United States where city and state governments may be better positioned to craft policies that can directly address locally-specific behaviors and conditions contributing to energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. This dissertation adds to the continued pursuit to understand the role local governments can and may play in reducing the United States' greenhouse gas footprint over time in three chapters. The first chapter presents a new database of key wholesale electric market characteristics, including existing infrastructure, financial products, size, and market structure, and connects them to state-level energy policymaking processes. This chapter also presents an example regression demonstrating how and why these characteristics are an important addition to policy analyses. Chapter two builds on Chapter one, analyzing why states adopt Renewable Portfolio Standards and what influences the level of stringency of those policies, adding variables that capture wholesale and retail market characteristics. These variables serve to capture the interests and motivations of electric utilities, a key stakeholder that has not been considered in previous studies, and results suggest indeed, they do influence policy choices related to Renewable Portfolio Standards. The final chapter presents case studies of five Minnesota cities actively trying to lower their energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. Patterns in the actions these cities have and have not taken reveal several common constraints preventing cities from taking some of the highest impact actions. This result indicates that higher level governing bodies, such as state governments, may still need to be a primary actor in this policy space.