Part IV focuses on the role of private interests in shaping political accountability. In Chapter 12, Eleanor Neff Powell, Devin Judge-Lord, and Justin Grimmer examine the relationship among financial contributions to congressional members, constituency interests regarding energy regulation, and congressional oversight of the bureaucracy. The authors analyze a novel dataset of over 6,000 communications between legislators and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) from 2000 to 2018. This analysis suggests that Republican legislators are more likely to write to FERC on behalf of energy companies while Democrats are more likely to write to FERC on behalf of individual constituents, who overwhelmingly oppose energy company interests. The energy sector increasingly funnels campaign contributions primarily to Republican candidates, with Democratic candidates receiving about a third as much as their Republican counterparts. Finally, consistent with the argument that private interests influence congressional oversight, the authors find a statistically significant positive association between energy sector contributions and pro-business communications by legislators.

Renewable energy, including wind and solar, has won the support of state governments by offering cost-competitive electricity, revenue to rural landowners and job opportunities. Utility companies and private companies are shifting to renewable energy that is already cheaper than coal and natural gas generation in many locations, while retaining their systems’ reliability and resilience. The Trump administration’s attempts to counter market forces that favored cheaper wind and solar largely failed to impede the progress of renewable energy. The United States, as documented in several studies, can achieve 80 percent renewable energy in its electric grid by 2035, up from 20 percent in 2020, using existing technologies, but that transition calls for a variety of supportive policies. Strategies that share the benefits from renewable energy adoption with communities that host renewable energy projects and transmission lines can help accelerate that transition, while securing broad political support. These strategies include assistance to rural electricity cooperatives to shift out of coal, developers’ benefit-sharing agreements with local communities and strategies to enhance project ownership by local communities. Likewise, targeting renewable energy projects at communities hosting fossil fuel power plants and fossil fuel generation can help achieve a more equitable energy transition.