A new study from the University of Colorado Boulder has found that democracies with deep emotional divides between political factions produce dirtier electricity, linking affective polarization directly to higher CO₂ emission rates at fossil-fueled power plants. The research, which spans 92 countries and more than 20,000 plants, offers some of the strongest cross-national evidence yet that partisan hostility is not just corroding governance but actively worsening the climate crisis.
Emotional Divides Drive Dirtier Power Plants
The distinction at the heart of the new research is between two types of polarization. Ideological polarization, where parties disagree on policy specifics, can sometimes push competing proposals and even spur regulatory innovation. Affective polarization is different: it measures how much citizens and politicians dislike the opposing side as people, regardless of policy substance. The study, published in the flagship sociology journal, finds that this emotional hostility is the variety that raises CO₂ emission rates, defined as the amount of carbon dioxide produced per unit of electricity generated.
The mechanism works through institutional erosion. When partisan animosity runs high, regulators lose the political insulation they need to enforce emissions standards or push plant operators toward cleaner technology. Gridlock prevents legislatures from updating environmental rules, and enforcement agencies face pressure to go easy on allies or punish opponents. Government-owned power plants, which in many democracies make up a large share of generating capacity, are especially vulnerable to pressure because their management answers directly to elected officials caught in partisan crossfire. In that environment, aging coal and gas facilities are more likely to keep running with obsolete equipment, locking in higher emissions intensities.
92 Countries, 20,000 Plants, One Pattern
What sets this research apart from earlier work on politics and emissions is its scale and specificity. Rather than relying on national-level carbon inventories, the study assembles a novel dataset of more than 20,000 fossil-fueled generators across 92 democratic countries. That plant-level granularity lets the researchers isolate the effect of a country’s polarization score on how efficiently each facility converts fuel into electricity, while controlling for factors like plant age, fuel type, installed capacity, and national income. Across these controls, the pattern is consistent: democracies where citizens harbor stronger hostility toward political opponents run power plants that emit more CO₂ for every megawatt-hour they produce.
The study distinguishes itself from broad governance critiques by showing that the problem is not democracy itself. Democratic institutions can drive ambitious climate policy when they function well, as comparative political science has long emphasized. The trouble starts when affective polarization degrades those institutions, stripping regulators of authority and turning environmental rules into tribal loyalty tests. According to a summary from CU Boulder, even democracies with strong formal environmental frameworks underperform on emissions when partisan hostility is high, because the informal political conditions needed to enforce those frameworks collapse and bureaucrats become hesitant to challenge politically connected emitters.
From Polarization Research to Climate Policy Risks
The findings build on a broader social-science literature that has traced how rising partisan animosity reshapes democratic behavior. Work synthesized in an annual overview of polarization shows that citizens increasingly judge parties and candidates not only by ideology but by social identity, moral disgust, and perceived threat. That shift has concrete policy consequences: voters punish compromise as betrayal, politicians fear primary challenges more than general elections, and cross-party bargaining becomes rare. In such a climate, technocratic issues like grid efficiency or emissions standards are easily swept into zero-sum partisan conflict.
For climate policy, this matters because decarbonization requires long time horizons and stable regulatory expectations. Utilities invest in power plants that operate for decades, and they do so based on anticipated rules about pollution, carbon pricing, and subsidies. When affective polarization makes those rules volatile, swinging sharply with each electoral cycle, firms have strong incentives to delay costly upgrades or cling to existing fossil infrastructure. The new cross-national evidence suggests that these incentives are not just theoretical: in democracies where partisan hostility runs hottest, fossil-fueled plants are measurably slower to adopt efficiency improvements and cleaner fuels, and their emissions intensity remains higher as a result.
The Green New Deal as a Case Study in Rapid Polarization
The United States offers a vivid illustration of how quickly climate proposals can become polarized beyond usefulness. A separate study published in a leading climate journal documented what it called a natural field experiment around the Green New Deal’s rise to prominence. As the proposal moved from a niche progressive idea to a national talking point, public opinion split sharply along party lines in a matter of weeks. Support and opposition hardened not because voters carefully evaluated the policy details, but because the proposal became a marker of partisan identity and a shorthand for broader cultural conflicts.
That pattern matters because it shows how affective polarization can neutralize climate action even when underlying policy support exists. Polling has repeatedly found that majorities of Americans favor clean energy investment and emissions reductions, but once a specific proposal gets coded as belonging to one party, voters on the other side reject it reflexively. The result is a political environment where broad agreement on goals coexists with total gridlock on implementation. The cross-national power plant data indicate that similar dynamics likely play out in other democracies. Ambitious climate packages become lightning rods, regulatory agencies are whipsawed between competing mandates, and utilities respond by sticking with familiar, higher-emitting technologies rather than risking stranded assets under a future hostile government.
State-Level Politics Shape Private-Sector Emissions
The connection between partisan control and emissions extends below the national level. Research reviewed by the corporate governance community found that the partisanship of U.S. state governors has a significant effect on the greenhouse gas emissions of private-sector businesses, even after accounting for industry composition and time trends. Companies operating under governors of different parties show measurably different emission trajectories, suggesting that executive-branch signals, enforcement priorities, and regulatory tone all filter down to corporate behavior. When state leaders downplay climate risks or weaken oversight, firms respond by slowing or shelving planned emissions reductions.
Separate research using bootstrap statistical techniques has also identified a dynamic link between partisan conflict and decarbonization in the United States. When partisan conflict rises, progress toward carbon neutrality stalls or reverses, whereas periods of lower conflict are associated with more consistent emissions declines. That finding aligns with the broader cross-national picture: political hostility does not merely slow climate policy; it actively pushes emissions higher by weakening the regulatory pressure that forces aging plants to upgrade or close. Public agencies like the U.S. Energy Information Administration provide detailed plant-level CO₂ data that allow researchers to observe these shifts over time, even if polarization itself must be measured through separate political indices.
Why Backlash Risk Locks In High-Carbon Infrastructure
A related concern is that polarization creates a feedback loop in which climate policy becomes both more necessary and harder to enact. Research published in a Nature portfolio journal in 2025 warned that climate mitigation models rarely incorporate political feasibility when evaluating decarbonization pathways. By focusing on technically optimal routes to net-zero emissions, many scenarios overlook the risk that aggressive policies will trigger partisan backlash, be reversed after elections, or provoke counter-mobilization from affected industries. In highly polarized democracies, that backlash risk is elevated, making sudden, sweeping reforms less durable and therefore less attractive to investors and regulators who must plan over decades.
The University of Colorado Boulder study suggests that this political risk is not just a constraint on future policy but a driver of current emissions. When policymakers and utilities anticipate that ambitious climate rules might be undone by the next government, they are more likely to favor incremental changes that keep existing fossil plants online. That caution reinforces the very polarization that made bold action risky in the first place, as frustrated climate advocates escalate their demands and opponents dig in further. Breaking this cycle will require not only better technology and stronger formal laws but also efforts to reduce affective polarization, lowering the emotional temperature enough that environmental regulation can once again be treated as a shared problem rather than a partisan weapon.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
