Relationship Between Political Parties and CO2 Emissions : Are emissions from Norwegian municipalities influenced by political parties?

Abstract

In this thesis, we investigate the relationship between political parties and carbon dioxide emissions in Norwegian municipalities from 2009 to 2021. We initially use a panel data approach to analyse Norway’s eight largest political parties. Afterwards, we use regression discontinuity design (RDD), where we focus on the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, which represent the opposite sides of the political spectrum. To account for the different characteristics of the municipalities, we divide them into three clusters using k-means clustering. Our results reveal that the Labour Party is associated with an increase in total emissions, while the Conservative Party has no statistically significant effect. Robustness checks confirm these results, indicating an average 11,6% increase in emissions when the Labour Party is in charge. In conclusion, our findings show that there is a relationship between political parties and emissions.