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.
63 Responses to “Half UK voters support renewable energy as ‘top priority’”
Leon Wolfeson
I’m in the UK. Where are you based? Has to be the US, right?
And no, because we sensibly stopped it from proceeding before anything major happened. The fact is, the taxpayer is on the hook for anything which DOES happen, and they are set to pay significantly less tax than other energy supplies.
And you’re lying, because there are known risks with fracking…the government had to assume the risk because insurers were saying “no”. That your town is destroying jobs elsewhere does not make my favour you, at all, and you can’t equate the US and UK systems – the UK’s RO system makes the US’s systems for this look rational – and I know that’s hard, but it’s true.
I am not talking about the “majority of industry”, I am talking about a system where the ONLY people who CAN benefit are the shareholders of the energy companies – bills cannot fall, overall production is very unlikely to rise (the North Sea fields are in decline, and this is a short-term replacement at best – diverting cash from base-load power). The risks are, again, not small or commercial insurance would have been available…
And no, I live in a democracy – I have far more options than voting in a FTTP charade. Fortunately.
itdoesntaddup
Yes, you will find links to the peer reviewed papers if you bothered to look. Clearly, you operate on an agenda, not on trying to inform yourself. Your pathetic attempts to suggest that because Germany is using more coal, I must support it just show how narrow your mind is. You’re certainly a straw man.
itdoesntaddup
For a nuclear shill, you have very little knowledge of nuclear economics.
Leon Wolfeson
I’m not a nuclear “shill”, I’m of the same position of Monbiot on it. And so sorry facts don’t agree with you.
For a coal shill, you’re throwing dook around like it was out of fashion.
Leon Wolfeson
You can provide the DOI’s then.
I, unlike you, have read the data. So sorry that hard facts are “pathetic” in your world, the people you want to burn are very real and so sorry I’m not a “wide” minded person like you, who will lie for any case who’ll shovel over the cash.