By Magali Delmas
THE prevailing view is that most firms lobby against climate regulations—such as those aiming to curb carbon emissions—because greater regulation threatens industry. Consider the United States Chamber of Commerce, which spent more than $90 million lobbying against climate change legislation in 2014—more than any organization, based on our analysis. That same year, one of the highest-polluting utilities, Southern Co., spent an estimated $9 million on climate-change lobbying.
My research co-authors, Jinghui Lim and Nick Nairn-Birch, and I examined Lobbying Disclosure Act data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics. We wanted to determine whether it’s true that only heavy greenhouse-gas (GHG) emitters (“brown” firms) lobby, or whether green firms (lower GHG emitters) are also active.
Our results, published in the Academy of Management Discoveries, show that the usual suspects were most active in climate lobbying: Companies in the automobiles and parts sector spent an average of approximately $1.8 million lobbying against climate change-related regulations per year, followed by utilities ($1.1 million), oil and gas ($0.8 million), and basic resources ($0.8 million).
However, our data also show greater lobbying activity among greener firms within these same industries, perhaps because their firms can leverage new regulations to gain a competitive advantage over industry rivals. For example, one of the greenest utilities in the nation, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) spent the second-highest amount (an estimated $27 million) of all firms lobbying on climate change in 2008—just behind ExxonMobil, which spent $29 million lobbying and produces an estimated 306 million tons of GHG emissions. PG&E openly supported a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions, and even left the US Chamber of Commerce over the organization’s vociferous opposition to carbon regulation.
With massive economic interests at stake with each regulation aimed at curbing climate change, it’s no wonder that vast sums are spent to petition government about them.
Magali Delmas is a professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and Anderson School of Management.