Listening Brief

Today’s guest, Leah Stokes, has looked deeply into the politics of renewable energy. She outlines Ontario’s solar feed-in tariff experience and the pivotal role of pricing on public support, and how Arizona has become a case-study of regulatory capture by the power utilities.   She’s studied how voting in Ontario was influenced by local opposition to wind turbines. Was it significant or not?  How far did any voting effects extend? Hear her conclusions and how they exemplify “spatially distorted signalling”. Finally, Leah explains why India and China are heading down different paths in their approach to mercury emissions from coal-fired power, in the wake of the Minamata Convention – one of the few multilateral enviromental agreements to come to fruition in recent years. Leah is a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. You can learn more about her research here.… Read the rest