Title: Surveying the Solar Power Gap: Assessing the Spatial Distribution of Emerging Photovoltaic Solar Adoption in the State of Georgia, U.S.A.

Abstract

Despite a global push in the development and implementation of widespread alternative energy use, significant disparities exist across given nation-states. These disparities reflect both technical and economic factors, as well as the social, political, and ecological gaps between how communities see energy development and national/global policy goals. Known as the “local-national gap”, many nations struggle with fostering meaningful conversations about the role of alternative energy technologies within communities. Mitigation of this problem first requires understanding the distribution of existing alternative energy technologies at the local level of policymaking. To address the limitation of existing adoption trend analysis at the scale of local governance (e.g., county governments), this paper demonstrates a novel method for contextualizing solar technology adoption by using the State of Georgia in the United States as an exemplar. Leveraging existing work on the Gini Coefficient as a metric for measuring energy inequity, we argue these tools can be applied to analyze where gaps exist in ongoing solar adoption trends. As we demonstrate, communities that adopt solar tend to be concentrated in a few counties, indicating existing conversations are limited to a circumscribed set of social networks. This information and the model we demonstrate can enable focused qualitative analysesmore » of existing solar trends, not only among high-adoption areas but within communities where little to no adoption has occurred.« less

Authors:

Tidwell, Jacqueline Hettel  ^[1];

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• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0002-9817-023X"

Tidwell, Abraham ^[1]; Nelson, Steffan ^[1]

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+ Show Author Affiliations

1. Univ. of Georgia, Athens, GA (United States)

Publication Date:

Fri Nov 09 00:00:00 EST 2018

Research Org.:

Univ. of Georgia, Athens, GA (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Solar Energy Technologies Office

OSTI Identifier:

1493312

Grant/Contract Number:  

EE0007664

Resource Type:

Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:

Sustainability (Basel)

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Name: Sustainability (Basel); Journal Volume: 10; Journal Issue: 11; Journal ID: ISSN 2071-1050

Publisher:

MDPI

Country of Publication:

United States

Language:

English

Subject:

14 SOLAR ENERGY; 32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION; 29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY; technology adoption; Lorenz curves; Gini coefficient; local-national gap; Georgia; NIMBY; solar energy; community development; soft cost reduction