A new survey by the Department of Energy and Climate Change shows that more than three quarters of people in the UK support the use of renewable energy.
The Sixth quarterly tracker survey of 2,124 households in early July confirmed that the government’s clean energy strategy is broadly supported by the public in spite of the bad press that green energy technology often attracts.
Asked whether they supported or opposed the use of renewable energy to provide electricity, fuel and heat, 76 per cent of respondents said they supported or strongly supported renewables. The levels of support are slightly down on the 82 per cent recorded earlier this year and the 79 per cent recorded in the first survey 18 months ago.
The proportion of respondents claiming to oppose or strongly oppose renewables stood at just five per cent, the same level recorded in the first tracker survey. Eighteen per cent said they neither supported nor opposed renewables, the equal highest level since the surveys began.
The survey also revealed a modest increase in the proportion of people who think renewables provide economic benefits to the UK. The number of people saying they would be happy to have a large-scale renewables project in their area rose from 55 to 56 per cent over the same period.
Interestingly, two thirds of the public said they were very or fairly concerned about global warming, with 38 per cent describing climate change as being mainly or entirely caused by human activity and 42 per cent saying it is partly caused by natural processes and partly caused by human activity. In contrast, just 12 per cent said it is entirely or mainly caused by natural processes. For more information, please see report by BusinessGreen.
