In a new article in PNAS, Prof. Fedor Dokshin and PhD candidate Mircea Gherghina examine the party politics and economics of residential solar panels. Drawing on data tracking over 60,000 household-level installations of solar photovoltaics (PV) in New York State, the authors find partisan gap in the adoption of residential solar panels, with Democrats demonstrating elevated rates of installation compared to Republicans. However, local context and economics matter: Republicans are more responsive to the economics of solar panels, suggesting the gap in PV adoption between Republicans and Democrats will shrink as homeowners’ electricity rates increase and alternative financing models grow. The authors’ research into the political polarization of energy transition has important implications for policy action. The full article is available now in PNAS: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2303519121.
Fedior Dokshin is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. His areas of interest include environmental sociology, political sociology, networks, and computational methods. His current research examines the political contestation of emerging energy industries.
Mircea Gherghina is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology studying environmental policy, energy transitions, economic sociology, inequality, science and technology studies, and computational social science.