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’”
gscales631
Thank you for being one of a very rare set of people I have read who actually factor in capacities of renewables and the required backup.
I read a Greenpeace document yesterday about powering the UK using renewables and in its cost analysis (which it claimed showed that renewables would save alot of money) it didn’t once discuss that you still have to build a backup. It kept stating that wind would provide 80% of power and did its maths based around that, but there was no figure for how much capacity would have to be installed to generate a fairly consistent 80% of national need. We have 5500 or so turbines right now. This very typically gets us between 0.5% and 4% of national usage. That implies we need between 1,100,000 and 137,500 turbines total, an increase of between 25 to 200 times. The problem of course is that we already put them in the best places. You cannot expect to just increase the number and see more stable output. Higher peak output yes, but not more stable. 1.1 million turbines instead of the current 5500 probably would get us towards that 80% figure, but boy, it is going to cost a hell of alot.
And that is what people have voted for here. All it says to me is that people are actually voting for the world they would like to live in. As if we asked people to vote whether they wanted to live in this world, or one where money was free and everyone got to live in Disneyland. Vote YES. But be disappointed when it doesn’t happen. The very big danger is that this disenfranchises everyone when they compare their fantasies to the way the world really works. And they come out in force and start harassing people, stalking them, putting nails and screws in the road, blocking roads and making death threats both online and in person as we are seeing now in the worst of the ‘peaceful environmental’ protests against fracking.
gscales631
About the only benefit of nuclear is its low CO2. Other than that I would hardly say it is safer. Fracking is only dangerous because of CO2. The only other drawback to it are minor seismic events, most of which cannot be felt. Air pollution can be monitored and controlled, but the risks from it are nothing compared to nuclear. Fracking has a higher risk of events that barely affect anything. Nuclear has a low risk of events that are terrible.
Leon Wolfeson
It’s significantly safer, including Chernobyl, than gas.
And you’re ignoring a lot of issues and waving your hand at the significance of what you dismiss as “minor”. Fracking has a host of known issues, and there is absolutely no upside to anyone who is not a shareholder in the energy companies of allowing it here. They are not even taking a significant financial risk.
Leon Wolfeson
Of course. Don’t forget to price in the grid connection as well – the costs of that are massive.
But your fracking companies are worse. You claim chimeras, lie about risk and have offloaded liability onto the people you’ll shaft.
Leon Wolfeson
The rich are. They are indeed contributing substantially to the rising bills which are afflicting the poor, while lowering theirs. Progress!