IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/engenv/v11y2000i4p461-477.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Customer Choice and Green Power Marketing in the United States: How far Can it Take US?

Author

Listed:
  • Ryan Wiser

    (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

  • Mark Bolinger

    (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

  • Edward Holt

    (Ed Holt & Associates, Inc.)

Abstract

This article explores whether and to what extent individuals are willing to voluntarily pay a premium for products that provide public environmental benefits. In particular, we critically review and analyze the status and impacts of U.S. green power marketing to date. Green power marketing – the business of selling electricity products distinguished by their environmental attributes – seeks to develop a private market for renewable energy driven by consumer demand for green products. Debate has centered on the ability of such a market to provide a significant level of support for renewable energy sources. This paper examines experience to date with green power markets in the United States, providing an historical overview, reviewing product offerings, assessing customer response, and calculating overall support for renewable energy. While market research shows that a majority of the populace states a willingness to pay a premium for renewable energy, early experience with green power marketing shows that those attitudes have not yet translated into large-scale behavior change, tracking experience in other environmental product markets. While a niche market for green power does exist, the data presented in this paper indicate that the collective impact of customer-driven demand on renewable generation has been modest thus far. Much will need to be done if this market is to play a strong role in supporting renewable energy in the early part of the millennium. Several lessons on how to potentially improve the prospects of green power marketing are therefore discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Ryan Wiser & Mark Bolinger & Edward Holt, 2000. "Customer Choice and Green Power Marketing in the United States: How far Can it Take US?," Energy & Environment, , vol. 11(4), pages 461-477, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:engenv:v:11:y:2000:i:4:p:461-477
    DOI: 10.1260/0958305001500248
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1260/0958305001500248
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1260/0958305001500248?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wiser, Ryan & Porter, Kevin & Clemmer, Steve, 2000. "Emerging Markets for Renewable Energy: The Role of State Policies during Restructuring," The Electricity Journal, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 13-24.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ward, David O. & Clark, Christopher D. & Jensen, Kimberly L. & Yen, Steven T., 2011. "Consumer willingness to pay for appliances produced by Green Power Partners," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 1095-1102.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kaiser, M.J. & Pulsipher, A.G., 2003. "A generalized modeling framework for public benefit fund program valuation," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 519-538.
    2. Menyah, Kojo & Wolde-Rufael, Yemane, 2010. "CO2 emissions, nuclear energy, renewable energy and economic growth in the US," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 2911-2915, June.
    3. Zachary A. Wendling & David C. Warren & Barry M. Rubin & Sanya Carley & Kenneth R. Richards, 2020. "A Scalable Energy–Economy Model for State-Level Policy Analysis Applied to a Demand-Side Management Program," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 34(4), pages 372-386, November.
    4. Shayegh, Soheil & Sanchez, Daniel L., 2021. "Impact of market design on cost-effectiveness of renewable portfolio standards," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    5. Kaiser, Mark J. & Pulsipher, Allan G., 2003. "Resource allocation decision modeling for a Louisiana Public Benefit Fund program," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(6), pages 639-667, November.
    6. Kaiser, Mark J. & Pulsipher, Allan G. & Baumann, Robert H., 2004. "The potential economic and environmental impact of a Public Benefit Fund in Louisiana," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 191-206, January.
    7. Sung-Lin Hsueh, 2012. "A Fuzzy Utility-Based Multi-Criteria Model for Evaluating Households’ Energy Conservation Performance: A Taiwanese Case Study," Energies, MDPI, vol. 5(8), pages 1-17, August.
    8. Ohler, Adrienne M., 2014. "Behavior of the firm under rate-of-return regulation with two capital inputs," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 61-69.
    9. Adrienne M. Ohler, 2015. "Factors affecting the rise of renewable energy in the U.S.: Concern over environmental quality or rising unemployment?," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2).
    10. David C. Warren & Zachary A. Wendling & Jacob Bower-Bir & Henry Fields & Kenneth R. Richards & Sanya Carley & Barry M. Rubin, 2015. "Estimating state and sub-state economic effects of a carbon dioxide tax policy: An application of a new multi-region energy-economy econometric model," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(3), pages 119-139, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:engenv:v:11:y:2000:i:4:p:461-477. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.