The political price of phasing out coal: An analysis of US Presidential Elections

Phasing out coal is a central policy lever for reaching the Paris agreement's climate targets. Phasing out technologies creates winners and losers, as they affect value chains and related jobs, which can result in political feedback effects, e.g., by voters switching to climate change-denying parties. The extant literature on coal phase-out is of qualitative nature and does not provide evidence for vote shifts. We address this gap by focusing on the US and analyzing - in a difference-in-difference setup - the feedback effects of decline in coal mining on electoral outcomes in the presidential elections from 2000 to 2016. The US, and particularly the region of Appalachia, has experienced a drastic and rapid decline in coal production since 2011, resulting in a loss of employment in mining of around 40% compared to 2010. Preliminary findings show that, in 2012, counties affected by coal decline had a significantly higher GOP vote share than those in the control group. The 2016 Trump campaign, which made the coal phase out even more salient, increased this effect further, but the main vote shift had already occurred in 2012. Abstracting from the US case, we discuss the implications of our findings for designing and managing coal phase-out.