Beyond Petroleum? The Diffusion of Alternative Fuels in the United States, 1994–2015

ABSTRACT

What determines whether technological innovations are adopted or abandoned? We leverage comparative data from three competing alternative fuel technologies to explore the conditions under which social movement organizations and industries support or challenge the adoption of emerging technologies. Empirically, we examine the diffusion of three technologies – electric, ethanol, and compressed natural gas – in the United States between 1994 and 2015. The comparison of results from quantitative analyzes of each case shows that environmental organizations can have different effects on the adoption of technologies that challenge fossil fuel dominance and that the effects change over time. The results also indicate that an incumbent industry that has an opportunity for diversification can positively influence the adoption of the technology, and that partial abandonment results when a technology is not supported by either environmental organizations or an incumbent industry.

KEYWORDS:

• Diffusion
• technological innovation
• energy transition
• social movements
• incumbent industries

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary Data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00380253.2024.2344533.

Notes

1. The efforts of the automobile industry to prevent the electrification of the ground transportation sector by pressuring the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to reverse the zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate, which required the major automobile suppliers in the United States to offer electric vehicles in California, are described in the 2006 documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?.”

2. The Beyond Coal campaign, organized by Sierra Club and supported by many environmental organizations, is considered the most effective campaign in Sierra Club’s history. In 2020 the environmental organization claimed that the campaign has successfully retired 60% of domestic coal-fired power plants. See: https://www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2020/09/bloomberg-philanthropies-and-sierra-clubs-beyond-coal-campaign-reaches

3. Combustion of natural gas in engines on board a vehicle is much less efficient than natural gas use in a modern combined cycle electric generation plant. Therefore, a car using CNG can drive 175 miles for one metric million British thermal units but a car using EL can drive 325 miles per metric million British thermal units. See: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy16osti/64267.pdf

4. It is likely that there is a strong correlation between the number of alternative fueling stations and the number of alternative fuel vehicles in the states. Although data on the total number of cars that run on alternative fuels in each state is not available, we were able to obtain the number of vehicles in inventory for particular alternative fuel vehicle fleets (federal government, state governments, and transit agencies) from the Energy Information Administration (https://www.eia.gov/renewable/afv/index.php). We found that in 2015 the number of alternative fueling stations is strongly correlated with the number of government-owned alternative fuel vehicles for CNG (.86), and EL (.96); however, the correlation is moderate for E85 (.35), most likely because E85 vehicles can run not only on ethanol but also on regular gas.

5. To avoid multicollinearity, we do not include a control for population because population and GDP are strongly correlated (correlation coefficient = .95). In alternative models, we included population instead of GDP and results were similar.

6. See: http://scorecard.lcv.org/methodology

7. We included the price of hydrocarbon gas liquids because hydrocarbon gases such as propane or butane are used to make liquefied petroleum gas. We included the price of cellulosic waste because it is sometimes used to make ethanol. Other sources of ethanol include common crops such as corn or sugarcane, but the price of corn ethanol is not available from the EIA. The only source that has information about the price of corn ethanol is the DOE’s Alternative Fuels Price Report – however, this data is available only from 2005 and only for certain regions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ion Bogdan Vasi

Ion Bogdan Vasi is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Iowa. He has conducted research on the diffusion of collective actions and organizational practices and is currently investigating the social factors that shape the global transition to renewable energy systems.

Michael Sauder

Michael Sauder is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Iowa. He is currently thinking a lot about the relationship between luck and inequality, how meanings of meritocracy vary by social location, and how the structures of status hierarchies influence the distribution of rewards.