Half UK voters support renewable energy as ‘top priority’

Nearly half the British public believe investing in renewables is the top priority for energy security, according to a new poll.

Nearly half the British public believe investing in renewables is the top priority for energy security, according to a new poll.

Perhaps more surprisingly, the view is reflected by voters across the four largest parties – including UKIP.

Almost half (48 per cent) of those surveyed picked investing in renewables as their number one energy priority, far ahead of building new nuclear reactors, which came in second at a distant 15 per cent. Support for fracking trails fourth at 13 per cent, after ‘reducing consumption’. 

Fracking was even less popular in the forty most marginal Tory/Labour seats, with just 8 per cent seeing it as the most important energy priority – a worrying finding for pro-fracking incumbents.

Just 2 per cent of UKIP supporters think that reducing the number of future onshore wind-farms should the government’s main priority, while 37 per cent believe that investing in renewables is the most important energy need.

Securing our energy supplies was seen as a top five priority for the majority of voters, with 53 per cent ranking it an urgent issue.

Commenting on the poll, RenewableUK chief executive Maria McCaffery said:

“This poll shows that the public want to tackle our energy security crisis by investing in renewables like wind, wave and tidal power and offsetting the need to import volatile and dirty fossil fuels from insecure parts of the world. Onshore wind, as the cheapest low carbon electricity source is a crucial component of that so it’s no wonder that the electorate will reject Parties that rule out its future use.”

The ComRes poll for RenewableUK follows a study last week which showed that politicians opposing wind development are a ‘turn off’ for voters.

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63 Responses to “Half UK voters support renewable energy as ‘top priority’”

  1. Cole

    Which just shows that the propaganda from the climate denier mob has had very little impact. Eat your heart out Owen Paterson..

  2. itdoesntaddup

    Polls such as this merely reveal the level of ignorance in the general population. If the poll asked how to rank choices for energy security having first listed the prices from the recent Energy Act and from markets for fossil fuels you would get rather different answers: this information is not mentioned in the polling questions. It should also be recognised that large parts of the media (particularly the dominant BBC) have been running an ill-informed anti-fracking campaign that utterly distorts the risks and the level of disruption likely to be caused. The poll therefore measures the success of these misinformation campaigns.

  3. itdoesntaddup

    It’s the success of the propaganda for the subsidy farmers that the poll demonstrates.

  4. rat man

    I smell something fishy.

    I’ve only skim read the document, but the question asked is about “developing secure energy”.

    This is then re-interpreted to renewables, ok fine, saying this then means people support wind power, when the survey is conducted by a wind power firm.

    That smell is getting abit stronger.

  5. Leon Wolfeson

    Rational opposition to the current system of RO’s has nothing to do with the government. We should transition to a carbon tax based system, ending the massive subsidies for very little production (in many cases), while pushing companies to move from oil and gas. In good part to nuclear, actually.

    Also, there are plenty of other things we could do, like Ireland’s single energy market, breaking up the strata of companies (no companies in generation AND customer sales), etc.

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