The political economy of local fracking bans

Abstract

Concerns about harmful effects arising from the increased use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to extract underground fuel resources has led to efforts to ban the practice. Many townships in western New York, which lies above the gas-rich Marcellus shale formation, have enacted bans or moratoria. Using spatial econometric techniques, we examine factors related to townships' choice to adopt fracking bans and document the importance of spatial dependence when analyzing fracking bans. We find education levels, the poverty rate, and veterans groups are associated with an increased probability of a township banning or putting a moratorium on fracking.

Discretionary Exemptions from Environmental Regulation

“…These codes consequentially influence the development of zoned areas (Levkovich et al 2018;Shertzer et al 2018). Local governments also use zoning for other purposes affect environmental quality, such as limiting deforestation (Nolte et al 2017), banning hydraulic fracturing (Hall et al 2018), limiting housing density (Zhang et al 2017), and specifying a minimum setback of construction from a waterway. Local governments that specify zoning regulations receive applications for and grant, at their discretion, variances from these regulations.…”

Just cuts for fossil fuels? Supply-side carbon constraints and energy transition

“…By mid-2018, such bans were in place within 19 countries at national level (although there were none in a top ten producing country), and 18 provincial/state jurisdictions, including within Australia, Canada and the USA. The uneven distribution of fracking bans in the USA, including at the municipality level, has highlighted some of the socioeconomic and micro-level politics factors that influence this, with notably higher education levels, poverty rates and percentage of Democrats increasing the likelihood of a fracking ban, while larger presence of veterans and existing wells reduces it (Hall et al., 2018). Similarly, the contrasting responses of different European countries point at the importance of political factors, with public concern being a sufficient condition for restrictions, while others like democratic tradition and energy security do not seem to matter (Van de Graaf et al., 2018).…”