Institutionalizing renewable electricity: the long-term potential for policy learning

Renewable electricity (RE) remains an elusive goal for many in the United States. However, particularly as a result of wind power in the past decade, RE is a growing segment of the United States economy and state energy portfolios. As a result, officials at every level of government, federal, state, and local, continue to be confronted with policy choices relating to the expansion of renewable electricity generation (REG). This paper examines the potential long-term effects of the construction of utility-scale (20+ megawatts or MW) REG power plants on the public lands, defined here as those lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The argument following suggests that these facilities contain the potential to institutionalize REG in a way that can inform policy learning within the energy sector at all levels of government, particularly intergovernmental policy collaboration. © 2015, AESS.