US Mayors Cite Red Tape as One Factor in Slowing Clean Energy Projects, BU Researchers Find

In a new survey of US mayors conducted by Boston University’s Initiative on Cities, 6 out of 10 said that red tape for federal grants and lack of awareness of government incentives has hampered the spread of solar panels and other clean energy projects at the local level. Photo via iStock/Jinli Guo
US Mayors Cite Red Tape as One Factor in Slowing Clean Energy Projects, BU Researchers Find
In latest BU Initiative on Cities Menino Survey of Mayors, city leaders say they’ve seen little impact so far from Inflation Reduction Act
More than half of US mayors—6 out of 10—saw little or no impact from the Inflation Reduction Act in the first year after its passage, attributing the unimpressive imprint of one of President Biden’s signature legislative achievements to the challenging grant application process and the public’s lack of familiarity with its details. That is one of the takeaways in the 2023 Menino Survey of Mayors by Boston University’s Initiative on Cities (IOC). Only 19 percent of the 118 mayors surveyed said they had seen “a lot” or “a great deal” of impact in their communities from the act, which provides close to $370 billion to fund clean energy investments through tax credits and grants to nonprofit groups, individual households, and local governments.
City leaders’ assessments of the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act, their communities willingness to host solar and wind energy installations, as well as mayors’ perceptions of their accountability and control over homelessness in their cities highlighted the findings in the 2023 Menino survey, the 10th edition of the annual study. The 2023 results appear in two reports from the IoC released March 7, “Building for a Green Future: Cities and the IRA,” and “Mayoral Accountability and Control,” coauthored by Katherine Levine Einstein, David M. Glick, and Maxwell Palmer, all College of Arts & Sciences associate professors of political science.
In the past, mayors have expressed serious concerns about climate impacts on their cities. In the 2022 survey of mayors, nearly all city leaders said they were “very worried” about local impacts of climate change, including drought, extreme heat, flooding, air pollution, and fires. Einstein says the issue of clean energy projects stemming from the Inflation Reduction Act was a natural follow-up line of inquiry for researchers, made more relevant by recent media reports noting that the Biden administration’s frustration that more projects had not emerged as a result of the act’s passage made examining mayors’ views important.
“We asked a lot of questions about climate change because it’s a really pressing issue to mayors. But we also knew that the federal government is really interested in understanding the local implementation of this act,” Einstein says. “And to us, the story there is really at the local level and how the local level is implementing this policy.”
Figure 1. IRA Impact on Community to Date:
“Last year’s Inflation Reduction Act included incentives for things like electric cars, solar panels, and heat pumps. Thus far, how much impact has the legislation had in your community?”

Mayors cited two major problem areas for implementing the Inflation Reduction Act at the local level: red tape for city grant applications and a lack of awareness of subsidies among residents. Addressing the issue of applying for funding, for example, only 38 percent of mayors described the process as straightforward, with 45 percent describing the process as difficult, requiring staffing to do research and complete paperwork. Researchers noted the responses could be a function of city size: mayors of larger cities tended to have more capacity for grant applications or employed a sustainability officer who could lead efforts to win federal funding.
As for their residents’ participation, 69 percent of mayors said confusion or lack of knowledge about programs was the biggest constraint for homeowners when it came to installation of solar panels. About half—51 percent—cited costs and affordable financing as an additional inhibitor. The survey showed similar results regarding the installation of heat pump mini-splits for heating and cooling homes: 68 percent of mayors said lack of knowledge blocked residents’ adoption and 34 percent noted lack of funds and affordable financing constrained these installations.
Asked their views on how to best communicate with residents about adopting climate-friendly technologies, such as heat pumps and battery-powered lawn tools, 65 percent of the mayors surveyed said it was better to highlight other pluses before talking about climate benefits, while 27 percent said it was best to emphasize climate benefits. And 8 percent said they would not mention climate benefits at all in discussing these technologies.
Commenting on the survey results, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb said in a statement that city leaders had to talk more about federal programs to deal with climate change and how these policies can help people’s lives.
“The opportunities funded through the Inflation Reduction Act move us closer to healthy, just, and sustainable cities. In Cleveland, we’re leveraging these funds to invest in good-paying, clean, and green economy jobs as well as the education and training pipelines for those jobs,” Bibb said. “But collectively, as mayors, we need to do a better job of translating how climate policy and justice directly impact the daily lives of our residents. We also need to help better educate our communities on the incentives and technologies available to them through the IRA.”
Einstein says that local regulations regarding land use and construction also play a role in how challenging it can be for homeowners or builders to pursue projects—including solar panels and heat pumps—to make cities more climate-resilient. For example, cities with strong historic preservation policies might prevent the installation of solar panels because they would change the appearance of historic buildings.
Researchers consider questions about housing a key measure of mayors’ views on land use, Einstein says. In past editions of the survey, mayors have noted vocal groups in their cities who strongly oppose new housing developments. In the 2023 survey, mayors indicate that some clean energy projects could attract even more opponents. Power transmission lines would garner the most opposition, 41 percent of mayors said, more than wind turbines (31 percent), low-rise multifamily housing (24 percent), and ground solar arrays (2 percent).
In addition to clean energy policy and the Inflation Reduction Act, IoC researchers also probed mayors’ views on how constituents hold them accountable on issues such as homelessness and disruptive behavior in public spaces, and on how much control they exert on these conditions from their city hall offices. The mayors’ responses indicated a major gap between the two.
Of the respondents, 73 percent said residents hold them accountable for homelessness in their city either “a great deal” or “a lot.” Only 19 percent of mayors said they had a great deal or a lot of control over the issue.
Figure 2. Perceived Accountability for and Control over Homelessness:
“How much do your residents hold you accountable for addressing homelessness in your city? How much control do you have over addressing homelessness in your city?”

On the issue of public disorder, there was another dramatic gap between mayors’ perceptions of accountability and control. More than half (53 percent) said residents held them a lot accountable, while only 7 percent said they felt they had a lot of control over the issue.
A majority of mayors (54 percent) responding also said they perceived the problem of disruptive behavior in public spaces as having worsened in the past five years. And 72 percent said they believed their constituents thought that such conditions have worsened in that time.
While there is much discussion about partisan differences in the United States, when asked about their views on maintaining public order, mayors from the two major political parties show remarkable levels of agreement. The vast majority—94 percent of Democrats and 95 percent of Republican respondents—agree that embedding mental health professionals with local police responses should be part of a city’s strategy to maintain public order. Similar responses followed in support for moves such as periodically cleaning homeless encampments, issuing fines to unsafe drivers, and restricting use of public parks after sundown.
One area that indicated a notable partisan difference: fining people who are disruptive in public parks or on public transit systems. While 90 percent of Republican mayors in the survey favored this policy, only 64 percent of Democratic mayors did. But even here, the tactic won support from a majority of respondents.
Figure 5. Potential Strategies to Maintain Public Order:
“Please rate how strongly you agree/disagree with the following statements. Part of a city’s strategy to maintain public order should include:”

Courtesy of the Initiative on Cities
The researchers note that while local government officials have a wide array of public policy tools they can use to address challenging issues, their cities also confront forces—like economic trends, crime, racial wealth gaps, and homelessness—that go beyond any one city. This puts mayors in a challenging spot, Palmer says.
“There are regional effects, state effects, national effects. A state can enact a limitation on what a mayor can do as well,” he says.
The survey results confirm that mayors are aware of this dynamic, as they consistently view their roles as positions where residents may blame them even if they have little or no control over a given issue.
The annual Menino Survey of Mayors, named after the late Boston Mayor Thomas Menino (Hon.’01) and supported by The Rockefeller Foundation, seeks to understand the pressing needs and policy priorities of America’s mayors from large and midsize (over 75,000 residents) cities. For this year’s survey, researchers interviewed 118 mayors from 39 states during summer 2023, providing a representative sample of mayors and cities nationally.
With a decade of survey responses in their data bank, IoC researchers are planning more studies that delve into the longitudinal trends.
Einstein cites as an example exploring partisan differences on issues over the years by analyzing responses to hundreds of questions.
“It’s been really interesting, because there are some areas where mayors are deeply partisan, but some other areas, like some parts of housing, as well as parking policy and homelessness, are areas where Democratic and Republican mayors actually have very similar preferences,” she says. “And so it tells us that local politics, I think, is really distinctive from the federal level in that way. There are some areas of local politics that are genuinely nonpartisan.”
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