DECC today launched the latest in its series of opinion polls on energy.
Face-to-face interviews were conducted with a representative sample of 2,040 UK households. We’ve taken a careful look at the statistics for each topic, and have summarised a comparison of the views about nuclear, onshore wind and fracking in the first graph below. There’s more detail about individual components of the survey further down in the blog post.
What can we say about this? Well, despite the acres of newsprint, despite the constant protestations by Russell George, Glyn Davies and others, and despite the wishes of the Conservative party who recently expressed policies restricting onshore wind and promoting fracking, onshore wind is greatly more popular than nuclear or fracking.
All the more reason to shout about it. All the more reason to sign up as a supporter of wind energy, whether as a member of Powys Windfarm Supporters, Action4Renewables or other supporters’ groups. And all the more reason for politicians to stand behind the technology, and focus on how we can get the most out of it – not how to put barriers in the way.
Renewable Energy
As the graph below demonstrates, overall support for renewable energy has remained roughly constant, at the 80% mark, whilst there’s a hard-core of respondents who just can’t stand the clean green stuff. They’re represented by about 1 in 20 of the population, and are presumably the ones being fought over by the Conservatives and Ukip.
The figures change a bit when people are asked about developments in their area (graph below), with stronger opposition to the idea – although there’s still a three to one majority in favour. Opinion seems to be shifting in favour, although it’s difficult to be certain as the graph consists of only three data points.
The onshore wind statistics make interesting reading; there’s a slight shift in favour of the technology recently, bringing the net support to nearly 60%. Could that be a backlash to the political hostility being demonstrated by Ukip and the Conservatives?
Nuclear
Although the nuclear industry can take some comfort from the latest figures, with record levels of support, net support for the technology is still only 1/3 that of onshore wind and it’s one of the least popular forms of energy generation. Given the massive costs involved, the only surprise is that support is as high as it is.
Climate Change
A slowly increasing trend is noticeable in concern about climate change. It’s both disappointing and surprising that only 37% of the respondents were ‘net’ concerned about the issue, but at least it’s increasingly an issue of concern.
What about Wales?
Avid followers of the activities of us at RenewableUK Cymru will remember last year’s opinion poll on energy, carried out for us and polling people living in Wales. It demonstrated levels of support for renewable energy technologies in line with the UK average as carried out by DECC.
In line with convention, we’ll have an update on that for you on the day of our annual conference (this Thursday). Watch this space!
