We use cookies where necessary to allow us to understand how people interact with our website and content, so that we can continue to improve our service.
We only ever receive anonymous information, and cannot track you across other websites.
View our privacy policy
This is a page that breaks down Climate Barometer data on public views on infrastructure proposals for UK100 councillors and their staff. Data has been disaggregated by region in the UK, but in some instances includes combining data from different time periods, which limits generalisability.
Overall, public support for renewable energy (onshore wind farms, solar parks) in their local area far outweighs public opposition. This is also the case for pylons. For nuclear energy, opposition slightly outweighs support, and support and opposition are mixed for lithium battery storage factories. Fracking and coal are more opposed than supported in all regions.
There are large perception gaps around support for renewables and pylons, with the majority of people underestimating support and overestimating opposition. The perception gaps are less evident for other types of infrastructure.
For a more detailed look at regional views, below is the same data by GOR. However, as this variable wasn’t included in all waves, the sample size and data collection dates differ (see captions). The sample sizes are smaller and therefore need to be interpreted cautiously.
We also generated regional splits for questions about how the public would like to be involved in infrastructure decisions, what factors they find most important, and how proposals can best be planned. There is high convergence across regions here:
The most important factors in community involvement were that proposals provide ‘clear, plain language information’ and ‘being asked for views early’. This was the case across all regions.
The factors people found most important for new infrastructure proposals were the same across all broad demographics (political preferences, gender, age group, social grade, ethnicity, income, and region). These three top issues are:
Views on climate change and energy security were much less of an influence over people’s views on infrastructure proposals – which we interpret to mean that there is overall ‘in principle’ approval for renewable infrastructure around the country, but that ‘in practice’ approval depends on more detailed local factors like how the proposal is carried out, and perceived impact on aspects of the environment/community and people’s lives.
Across regions, the public tended to have the same preferences for measures that would increase support for local renewables: the majority chose ‘energy bill discounts for nearby households’ and ‘new local jobs/apprenticeships’. Other tangible measures such as local ‘improvements to parks, rivers and forests’ and ‘priority connections’ for public services were preferred over things like community ownership and benefit funds, likely due to lack of familiarity with the T&Cs of such proposals.
— Katie Graham (East Suffolk, Green Party councillor) raised the challenge of navigating her own communications in a context where people who say they support net zero are vehemently opposing specific renewable projects — nuclear, offshore wind, and solar farms alike. She noted that the loudest opposition tends to come from higher socioeconomic groups and from those who consider themselves environmentalists, and that the transition is often being led by corporations without equitable benefit-sharing. She’s trying to hold the line on the urgency of decarbonisation whilst being sympathetic to legitimate concerns about how it’s being done. She’d be particularly interested in any regional polling you might be able to offer.
Definitely empathise with this tricky situation. Regarding our data and regional splits, we can give you a breakdown of some questions about renewables support and local infrastructure projects in the East of England (approx 200-250 participants). The sample size isn’t huge, unfortunately, but for some questions we can give you data over time, where the total sample size is 1729.
Over time, there’s been a slight shift in people seeing climate policies bringing costs vs. opportunities, with slightly more in recent times feeling that climate policies will bring more costs
Splitting by social grade, the higher grades are more likely to say climate policies will bring more opportunities, and lower grades are more likely to say they will bring more costs
— Ros Hathorn (Cambridgeshire) asked whether the infrastructure questions in your polling are hypothetical or tied to real proposed projects — and whether support numbers shift significantly once a specific location is proposed.
This is a very good suggestion that we’ll endeavour to test out in a future poll. Thank you!
— Scott Patient (North of England) raised a structural point about burden distribution: communities of lower socioeconomic status often bearing the greatest physical impact of renewable development (flooding risks in valleys from large wind farm development, for instance), and how that plays out in your data.
There might be some data that matches what you’re describing: a quick skim over our data by social grade shows some differences in support for renewables – with ABC1s tending to be ABC1s tend to be more strongly supportive of renewables and more strongly opposed to coal and fracking, while C2DEs show similar directions but with more uncertainty (higher “don’t know”).
Similarly, those of higher and lower income bands both tend to support renewables and oppose coal and fracking, but higher income groups tend to show stronger pro-renewable support.
Lucy (comms, Lewisham Council) asked whether any of the data is broken down by area or region.
Absolutely, all our data can be broken down by regions (e.g., West Midlands/Scotland/London), but more fine-grained breakdowns are difficult without ending up with very small numbers (see above).
— David Sharman (Gloucestershire County Council) noted it was dispiriting to see community ownership and shared ownership score relatively low as factors influencing public support for renewable infrastructure — and was keen to understand what might shift that. It’s worth knowing that Cllr Andy Hadley (BCP) offered a possible explanation in the chat: that people may not easily draw a direct line between a community benefit fund and tangible local outcomes like parks and greenspaces, which might account for that finding.
We agree with Councillor Hadley – much of this may come down to knowledge of community ownership and similar arrangements, trust that they will lead to benefits, vs. the ‘tangibility’ of knowing that if X is built, Y park will be improved
We don’t have data about what would increase support – but given this, it’s likely that knowledge/awareness of the option, as well as having clear, tangible examples that people have heard about working well will help.
