Date of Completion
2018
Document Type
Honors College Thesis
Department
Environmental Program
Thesis Type
Honors College, Environmental Studies Electronic Thesis
First Advisor
Robert V. Bartlett
Second Advisor
Jody Prescott
Third Advisor
Brendan Fisher
Keywords
Community solar, normative reframing, policy analysis
Abstract
State legislatures and public utilities commissions are increasingly implementing policies to promote and regulate the development of community solar programs as mechanisms to expand the development of and increase access to renewable energies. This paper tests normative reframing, a theory of policy process, to explain the development of community solar policy in Maryland and Minnesota in the face of competing policy goals and institutional opposition. Through process tracing of primary legislative and rulemaking sources, supplemented by informational interviews with stakeholders, it explores the norms embedded within these policies and the frames through which these norms are portrayed. Additionally, this paper offers insight into how research on normative reframing may be further explored across the renewable energy industry to help explain and understand a clean energy transition.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Murray-Clasen, Madeline, "Normative Reframing as a Policy Process: Community Solar for Low-Income Electric Customers" (2018). UVM Honors College Senior Theses. 264.
https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/hcoltheses/264