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American fathers love EVs, support clean energy, and are trying to eat more plants.
Picture a stereotypical American father.
He’s tending to his grill on a hot summer day, grinning as he flips a burger, stabs at a hot dog sizzling on the rack. He’s a bit doughy from decades of drinking beer (he’s a Coors man, like his dad) and of sitting at a desk, comfortably trapped in middle management. He tells a joke, and you feign a laugh, realizing that it probably seemed funnier, and more acceptable, to him back when he was young. He’d voted for Obama in 2008 — simpler times, he shrugs — but now leans conservative. It’s 10 degrees warmer in his mosquito-filled backyard than it should be at this time of year, but he doesn’t want to hear about climate change. In fact, he rolls his eyes when he mentions the couple down the street — the ones with the Ioniq and the panels on their roof.
This cartoon of an American dad who scoffs about climate change is easy to conjure, abetted by a Republican campaign to make environmentalism seem the province of liberal elites. “People when they start talking about things like global warming,” Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida and likely presidential candidate, said in December, “they typically use that as a pretext to do a bunch of left-wing things.” Things, of course, that would be anathema to such Coors-drinking, meat-stabbing Weber dads.
Yet the results of the inaugural Heatmap Climate Poll, conducted in late February by Benenson Strategy Group, contradict such facile assumptions. Although recent surveys have shown that men across all ideological lines are less concerned about climate change than women, having children seems to sharpen their focus. I spoke with Peter Olivier, the head of new markets for the carbon-removal company UNDO — and a self-proclaimed “climate dad” — about the phenomenon. “You have a young kid, you look at them, you think, oh my God, this kid’s gonna grow up and ask me what I did [about climate change] or what I didn’t do,” he said. “And I’m going to have to answer them.”
On a number of critical issues, those answers may indeed be coming from America’s dads. From EV adoption to beef consumption, fathers are helping lead the country towards a more sustainable future — or a least they say they are. Their answers were so strikingly climate-friendly that one wonders if they were trying to make the moms, and everybody else, look bad in comparison. (Knowing dads, it wouldn't be the first time.)
When it comes to vehicles, America’s fathers are on the forefront of decarbonization. Twenty-one percent of dads say they currently drive an electric vehicle, and 48% would like to in the future; those numbers dip to 12% and 43% for all men, 8% and 44% for moms, and to 8% and 39% for all respondents. They’re also more likely to say they currently or would like to ride an e-bike, ride a regular bicycle, or take public transportation. Everyone was about equally likely to say they currently walk instead of drive, but dads were more eager to do it in the future.
As to their homes, the trends were similar, albeit in a somewhat baffling way. Twenty-six percent of fathers, compared with 22% of all men, 17% of mothers, and 19% of all respondents, say they use heat pumps to warm and cool their houses. Thirty-seven percent of dads hope to switch to heat pumps in the future, 14 points higher than all men. Twenty-six percent of fathers say they currently power their homes with solar panels — compared to 19% of all men, 13% of all respondents, and, bizarrely, just 8% of moms — and compost at greater rates than the other demographics. Dads were also more willing than the other demographics to say they’d be willing to downsize their home.
While some of these results could be influenced by economic factors — it’s not cheap to install solar panels or buy an electric car, and there is a wide gender gap in American pay — the same cannot be said for the matter of diet. Sixteen percent of fathers say they currently do not eat meat (compared to 10% of all men, 8% of mothers, and 10% of all respondents), and 29% of dads want to do so in the future (that number drops by about 10 percentage points for the other demographics).
While fathers lag mothers and all respondents in currently limiting their beef intake, 34% of dads want to eat less red meat in the future — compared to 23% of all men, 17% of moms, and 21% of all respondents. Fathers were also more likely than all men, mothers and all respondents to say they limit their consumption of all animal products, by a slim margin in the present (25% to 21%, 23%, and 21%) and a wider one in the future (33% to 23%, 26%, and 22%).
And when it comes to cooking that meat — or its plant protein-based facsimile — 29% of dads would like to use an electric stove instead of gas, compared to 25% of all men, 18% of moms, and 20% of all respondents; the four groups currently eschew gas in roughly equal numbers.
Fathers were also far more supportive of wind, nuclear, and geothermal energy than the other demographics (though the four groups were broadly in favor of solar panels). Eighty-one percent of fathers said they’d welcome wind turbines in their communities, compared to 70% of all men, 72% of all respondents, and 73% of mothers. Forty-six percent of dads would be similarly welcoming to nuclear power; that number dropped to 42% of all men, 32% of all respondents, and just 16% of moms. A whopping 83% of fathers would also welcome a geothermal station, far more than the 59% of all men, 62% of all respondents, and 47% of moms who said the same.
Fathers were also about twice as likely as the other demographics to say that renewable energy should be rolled out as quickly as possible, even if comes at the expense of natural land. They were also more likely than the other groups to be supportive of spraying chemicals in the atmosphere to counter the effects of climate change.
Some results did track more closely to what one might expect from American fathers — compared to mothers, they worry less about the effects of climate change on their homes (71% to 85%), their children (67% to 82%), and their own lives (59% to 80%). Elon Musk has made dads more, not less, likely to want to drive a Tesla, and they want to have fewer, or no, children in the future — ostensibly to combat climate change, but possibly also to be able to go fishing more often with their friends.
Despite the latter results, the broader picture makes it clear that American fathers are more engaged with battling climate change than the stereotype allows. “Dads are funny and strange and less ideological and pedantic and all these regular dad things too,” says Olivier. “And they don’t stop being that way when they get focused on climate. So they do funny stuff like talk obsessively about heat pumps and try to calculate their solar gains … just all kind of normal dad stuff.” In other words, fathers are beginning to shift their essential dad-ness to the crisis at hand, in their lovably corny way.
So the next time you’re in that sweltering, mosquito-filled backyard, take a good look at what that fictional father is cooking on his grill — those might just be Impossible Burgers he’s tending to.
The Heatmap Climate Poll of 1,000 American adults was conducted by Benenson Strategy Group via online panels from Feb. 15 to 20, 2023. The survey included interviews with Americans in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.02 percentage points. You can read more about the results here.
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Almost half of developers believe it is “somewhat or significantly harder to do” projects on farmland, despite the clear advantages that kind of property has for harnessing solar power.
The solar energy industry has a big farm problem cropping up. And if it isn’t careful, it’ll be dealing with it for years to come.
Researchers at SI2, an independent research arm of the Solar Energy Industries Association, released a study of farm workers and solar developers this morning that said almost half of all developers believe it is “somewhat or significantly harder to do” projects on farmland, despite the clear advantages that kind of property has for harnessing solar power.
Unveiled in conjunction with RE+, the largest renewable energy conference in the U.S., the federally-funded research includes a warning sign that permitting is far and away the single largest impediment for solar developers trying to build projects on farmland. If this trend continues or metastasizes into a national movement, it could indefinitely lock developers out from some of the nation’s best land for generating carbon-free electricity.
“If a significant minority opposes and perhaps leads to additional moratoria, [developers] will lose a foot in the door for any future projects,” Shawn Rumery, SI2’s senior program director and the survey lead, told me. “They may not have access to that community any more because that moratoria is in place.”
SI2’s research comes on the heels of similar findings from Heatmap Pro. A poll conducted for the platform last month found 70% of respondents who had more than 50 acres of property — i.e. the kinds of large landowners sought after by energy developers — are concerned that renewable energy “takes up farmland,” by far the greatest objection among that cohort.
Good farmland is theoretically perfect for building solar farms. What could be better for powering homes than the same strong sunlight that helps grow fields of yummy corn, beans and vegetables? And there’s a clear financial incentive for farmers to get in on the solar industry, not just because of the potential cash in letting developers use their acres but also the longer-term risks climate change and extreme weather can pose to agriculture writ large.
But not all farmers are warming up to solar power, leading towns and counties across the country to enact moratoria restricting or banning solar and wind development on and near “prime farmland.” Meanwhile at the federal level, Republicans and Democrats alike are voicing concern about taking farmland for crop production to generate renewable energy.
Seeking to best understand this phenomena, SI2 put out a call out for ag industry representatives and solar developers to tell them how they feel about these two industries co-mingling. They received 355 responses of varying detail over roughly three months earlier this year, including 163 responses from agriculture workers, 170 from solar developers as well as almost two dozen individuals in the utility sector.
A key hurdle to development, per the survey, is local opposition in farm communities. SI2’s publicity announcement for the research focuses on a hopeful statistic: up to 70% of farmers surveyed said they were “open to large-scale solar.” But for many, that was only under certain conditions that allow for dual usage of the land or agrivoltaics. In other words, they’d want to be able to keep raising livestock, a practice known as solar grazing, or planting crops unimpeded by the solar panels.
The remaining percentage of farmers surveyed “consistently opposed large-scale solar under any condition,” the survey found.
“Some of the messages we got were over my dead body,” Rumery said.
Meanwhile a “non-trivial” number of solar developers reported being unwilling or disinterested in adopting the solar-ag overlap that farmers want due to the increased cost, Rumery said. While some companies expect large portions of their business to be on farmland in the future, and many who responded to the survey expect to use agrivoltaic designs, Rumery voiced concern at the percentage of companies unwilling to integrate simultaneous agrarian activities into their planning.
In fact, Rumery said some developers’ reticence is part of what drove him and his colleagues to release the survey while at RE+.
As we discussed last week, failing to address the concerns of local communities can lead to unintended consequences with industry-wide ramifications. Rumery said developers trying to build on farmland should consider adopting dual-use strategies and focus on community engagement and education to avoid triggering future moratoria.
“One of the open-ended responses that best encapsulated the problem was a developer who said until the cost of permitting is so high that it forces us to do this, we’re going to continue to develop projects as they are,” he said. “That’s a cold way to look at it.”
Meanwhile, who is driving opposition to solar and other projects on farmland? Are many small farm owners in rural communities really against renewables? Is the fossil fuel lobby colluding with Big Ag? Could building these projects on fertile soil really impede future prospects at crop yields?
These are big questions we’ll be tackling in far more depth in next week’s edition of The Fight. Trust me, the answers will surprise you.
Here are the most notable renewable energy conflicts over the past week.
1. Worcester County, Maryland –Ocean City is preparing to go to court “if necessary” to undo the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s approval last week of U.S. Wind’s Maryland Offshore Wind Project, town mayor Rick Meehan told me in a statement this week.
2. Magic Valley, Idaho – The Lava Ridge Wind Project would be Idaho’s biggest wind farm. But it’s facing public outcry over the impacts it could have on a historic site for remembering the impact of World War II on Japanese residents in the United States.
3. Kossuth County, Iowa – Iowa’s largest county – Kossuth – is in the process of approving a nine-month moratorium on large-scale solar development.
Here’s a few more hotspots I’m watching…
The most important renewable energy policies and decisions from the last few days.
Greenlink’s good day – The Interior Department has approved NV Energy’s Greenlink West power line in Nevada, a massive step forward for the Biden administration’s pursuit of more transmission.
States’ offshore muddle – We saw a lot of state-level offshore wind movement this past week… and it wasn’t entirely positive. All of this bodes poorly for odds of a kumbaya political moment to the industry’s benefit any time soon.
Chumash loophole – Offshore wind did notch one win in northern California by securing an industry exception in a large marine sanctuary, providing for farms to be built in a corridor of the coastline.
Here’s what else I’m watching …