Michigan Technological University Digital Commons @ Michigan Tech Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports 2020 Aging Pipeline Infrastructure in the United States: How do a changing policy mix, issues of energy justice, and social media communication impact future risk analysis? Brent Burns Michigan Technological University, bburns@mtu.edu Copyright 2020 Brent Burns Recommended Citation Burns, Brent, "Aging Pipeline Infrastructure in the United States: How do a changing policy mix, issues of energy justice, and social media communication impact future risk analysis?", Open Access Dissertation, Michigan Technological University, 2020.etdr/1078 Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.edu/etdr Part of the Energy Policy Commons AGING PIPELINE INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE UNITED STATES: HOW DO A CHANGING POLICY MIX, ISSUES OF ENERGY JUSTICE, AND SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNICATION IMPACT FUTURE RISK ANALYSIS? By Brent J. Burns A DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In Environmental and Energy Policy MICHIGAN TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY 2020 © 2020 Brent J. Burns This dissertation has been approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Environmental and Energy Policy. Department of Social Sciences Dissertation Advisor: Dr.
Adam Wellstead Committee Member: Dr. Chelsea Schelly Committee Member: Dr. Mark Rouleau Committee Member: Dr. Kalim Shah Department Chair: Dr.
Hugh Gorman Table of Contents List of figures. viii List of tables. xiv 1 Aging Pipeline Infrastructure Risk Analysis: How Changing Pipeline Policy Goals, Energy Justice, and Agenda Setting Impact Risk Analysis .1 Policy Change for Aging Pipeline Infrastructure .2 Current Risks of Aging Pipeline Infrastructure .4 Aging Pipeline Infrastructure Problem.8 2 Using a policy mix approach to understand how changing policy goals and politics affect legacy policy regimes .1 Research Questions and Hypothesis .2 Energy Policy Goals .3 Assessing Policy Mixes .4 Political Impact on Policy Goals. Federal Pipeline Policy .4 Data and Methods .2 Policy Goal Coding .3 Policy Instrument Coding .4 Political Characteristic Coding .1 Policy Goal Changes Over Time .1 Summary of Policy Goal Instruments .2 Policy Goal Changes Over Time .2 Policy Instrument Mix .1 Consistency, Coherence, and Congruence of the Policy Mix 41 2.3 Political Impact on Policy Goals.46 3 Advancing the state of energy justice research using deterministic approaches in search of causality .1 Case-Oriented Studies.
Qualitative Methods and Causal Mechanisms.3 Deterministic Approaches and Causality .3 Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) .3 Current State of Energy Justice Methods .3 Geographic Distribution of Case Studies .4 Shifting to Deterministic Approaches .1 Suggested Changes to Specific Energy Justice Articles .1 Favored Policy Mechanisms for Renewable Energy (Sovacool, 2009) .2 Enacting community energy (Forman, 2017) .3 Examining the social acceptance of wind energy: Practical guidelines for onshore wind project development in France (Enevoldsen and Sovacool, 2016) .4 Distributional justice in Swedish wind power development – An odds ratio analysis of windmill localization and local residents’ socio-economic characteristics (Liljenfeldt and Pettersson, 2017).2 Existing Studies Using Deterministic Approaches .3 Framework for Shifting to Deterministic Approaches.77 v 4 Why is the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline crossing at the Straits of Mackinac on the agenda? Using Twitter data to display open policy windows and how they are impacted by reinforcing spirals in social media .1 Research Questions & Hypothesis .1 Multiple Streams Approach and Focusing Events .3 Reinforcing Spirals in Media .4 Data and Methods .1 Phase 1: Determine if the Enbridge Line 5 policy window is open .2 Phase 2: Determine if reinforcing spirals exist in the line 5 policy debate 94 4.2 Reinforcing Spirals in the Line 5 Debate .1 Phase 1: Specific focusing event date ranges for keyword “Line5” 106 4.2 Phase 2: Full Recent Twitter Search for Keywords ‘Enbridge’ AND ‘Line 5 or Line5’ .115 vi 5 Conclusions and Directions for Future Research.1 Policy Implications for Aging Pipeline Infrastructure Risk Analysis .128 A Policy Mix Coding Manual.2 Data inclusion test (PHASE 2): .3 Coding policy instruments (PHASE 3): .131 B Twitter Full Archive Data Acquisition via Twitter Application Programming Interface (API) and NodeXL Analysis .1 Create Twitter Developer accout .2 Create Twitter Developer App (or project) .3 Generate API Key Pair .4 Set up Dev Environment .5 Search Twitter data using Postman interface .1 Create bearer token .2 Submit request to Twitter full archive .3 Data Collection – Move data from Postman into Text Editor .4 Convert Raw Data to Useable Format – unlimited text files .5 Import Text data from Node.js file – convert to delimited text .6 Import Tweet IDs into NodeXL .7 Create Social Network Graph in NodeXL .152 vii List of figures Figure 2.1 Link between policy mix boundaries and consistency/coherence .2 Where pipelines are located in the United States .3 Federal pipeline policy instruments - policy goal change over time (1968- 2016) .4 Instrument target changes over time (cumulative) .5 Overall federal pipeline policy instruments by principal governing resource .6 Overall federal pipeline policy instruments: substantive versus procedural by principal governing resource.7 Substantive/procedural instrument policy mix over time for federal pipeline policy.8 Substantive policy instrument mix over time (1968-2016) (cumulative) *excluding “un-categorized” .9 Procedural policy mix over time (1968-2016) (cumulative) *excluding “un- categorized” .12 Federal pipeline bill sponsor home district region - count .1 Process tracing tests for causal inference (Source: Collier (2011)) .2: Energy Justice Metric (EJM). Source: Heffron et al.3 Top keywords associated with 'energy justice' keywords in Journals .4 Keyword word cloud for energy justice articles.5 Geographic percentage distribution of case studies within 75 energy justice articles .6 Framework for shifting energy justice research to deterministic approaches .1 Time spent per day with digital versus traditional media in the United States from 2011 to 2019.2 Map of Enbridge Line 5 pipeline.3 2018 Protest to shutdown Enbridge Line 5 .4 Example of social network map visualization with Twitter keywords: mentions of #GoBackSBS participants .5 Number of online articles referenced on Twitter focused on Enbridge Line 5 policy problem over time *noting 2020YTD .6 Number of online articles from Twitter referencing Enbridge Line 5 problem, by month over time .7 Word cloud for article headlines with Line 5 problems .8 Timeline of Enbridge Line 5 policy actions (2014-2020) .9 Tweets from selected politicians about Enbridge Line 5 over time .10 Tweet word cloud from politicians regarding Enbridge Line 5 .11 #Line5 Twitter social network graph for focused time frames .12 Social network graph of recent Twitter data for keywords containing 'Enbridge' and 'Line 5 or Line5' from March 9, 2020 - November 28, 2018 .111 ix List of tables Table 1.1 Policy change within policy process theories .1 Taxonomy of pipeline policy instruments. federal pipeline policy legislation .3: Pipeline policy goals and keyword criteria .4 Taxonomy of pipeline safety policy instruments .5 Count of federal pipeline policy instruments organized by policy goal .6 Examples of policy instruments coded as “safety” policy goals .7 Examples of policy instruments coded as “auxiliary” policy goals.8 Examples of policy instruments coded as “economic” policy goals .9 Examples of policy instruments coded as ‘environmental” policy goals .10 Pipeline policy instrument target percentages .11 Policy instrument mixes by share of instrument type .12 Changing policy goals relationship to usage of policy instruments .13 Current federal pipeline policy mix assessment - consistency, coherence, and congruence .14 Political party information during federal pipeline public law passage .15 Federal pipeline bill political party co-sponsors compared to economic policy goals over time .16 Federal pipeline bill political party co-sponsors compared to environmental policy goals over time .1 Summary of 'energy justice' articles by journal publication .2 Summary for energy justice articles .3 Suggested explanatory variables for use in QCA for Sovacool (2009) .1 Focusing events used for Line 5 social network analysis of Twitter data.2 Number of articles on Twitter referencing Enbridge Line 5 policy problem .3 Enbridge Line 5 policy instruments by government source type .4 Line 5 related policy actions between 2014 and 2020 .5 Tweets from select politicians about the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline over time 103 Table 4.6 Tweets for #Line5 during focused time frames .7 Top ten Twitter users centrality measures for #Line5 for focused time frames .8 Top ten Twitter users centrality measures for 'Enbridge' AND 'Line5 or Line 5' recent history .112 xi Preface The following chapters will be submitted to journals in the near future: Chapter 2, Using a policy mix approach to understand how changing policy goals and politics affect legacy policy regimes, will be submitted to Energy Policy. Chapter 3, Advancing the state of energy justice research using deterministic approaches in search of causality, will be submitted to Energy Research and Social Science.
Chapter 4, Why is the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline crossing at the Straits of Mackinac on the agenda? Using Twitter data to display open policy windows and how they are impacted by reinforcing spirals in social media, will be submitted to the Policy Studies Journal. xii Acknowledgements I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank my committee members. I thank Adam Wellstead (Social Sciences) who served as my advisor and committee members: Chelsea Schelly (Social Sciences) and Mark Rouleau (Social Sciences). A special thanks to the external member, Kalim Shah, who participated in my dissertation defense.
I also thank my colleagues at Michigan Technological University who have supported me along the process, with special thanks to direct supervisors Jim Baker, Jason Carter, and Kathy Halvorsen. I thank them for their support in both approving tuition and allowing flexibility to achieve the many milestones along the path. A special thanks to my good friend Michael McEntee for assisting in programming and navigating the Twitter API used in Chapter 4. Thanks to all those who helped review drafts along the way including my colleague Pete Larsen.
Special thanks to my parents, Bernie and Terry Burns, for not only reviewing dissertation drafts, but more importantly for providing me with the lifelong work ethic, dedication, and motivation to pursue whatever my dreams may be. Lastly, I would like to thank my family, Catherine, Brad, and Lexi, for their patience and encouragement throughout this long journey. xiii Abstract Over two and a half million miles of pipeline cross the United States today, half of which is over fifty years old and thus was designed, located, and debated without today’s modern environmental policies in place. Aging pipeline infrastructure, such as the (infamous in Michigan) Enbridge Line 5 pipeline underwater crossing at Michigan’s Straits of Mackinac, has undergone increased public scrutiny and risk analysis this past decade.
This has led to the potential for policy changes in the historically stable energy services institution associated with pipeline infrastructure regulation. While policy process literature generally describes how policy changes over time, it is missing research on how new goals and new technology, such as energy justice and social media, impact agenda setting and decisions when added to the policy mix. This dissertation first investigates the evolving federal pipeline regime policy goals through an advanced policy mix analysis. Next, it argues that energy justice research can be advanced through deterministic approaches and analyses.
Last, this dissertation uses a social network analysis to explain why aging pipelines are on today’s policy agenda through. By understanding how the pipeline policy mix has changed over time, including through the addition of modern topics such as energy justice and modern technologies such as social media, policy and decision makers can improve prioritization of risk analysis for aging pipeline infrastructure. xiv 1 Aging Pipeline Infrastructure Risk Analysis: How Changing Pipeline Policy Goals, Energy Justice, and Agenda Setting Impact Risk Analysis 1.1 Policy Change for Aging Pipeline Infrastructure The purpose of this dissertation is to advance the scholarly field of policy science within the energy policy discipline, focusing on aging infrastructure. The three empirical chapters will accomplish this goal through 1) conducting a detailed policy mix analysis of the United States oil and gas pipeline policy regime goals, 2) describing how to use energy justice principles with deterministic approaches, and 3) demonstrating the impact of modern social media and actors influencing the agenda setting process.
Chapter two reviews U.