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The Climate Barometer tracker typically runs twice a year in spring and autumn, providing an up-to-date assessment of MP and public opinion on climate change over time. Occasionally we deviate from this pattern to capture other important moments, for instance, the 2024 UK General Election.
The surveys include core questions that are repeated over several waves, designed to enable us to track trends, changes in sentiment and narratives., and topical questions on current issues are included as they emerge. You can explore some of our questionnaires in the blocks below.
Wave 1 (Oct 2022) through Wave 8 (Oct 2025) were conducted through YouGov, who administered both the MP and the general public survey. From Wave 9 (Aug 2026) onwards, both surveys are administered by Savanta. Care has been taken to ensure that sampling, questionnaire administration, weighting and data quality are as consistent as possible in this change, but we accept that there will be some differences in panel providers, or ‘house’ effects visible in the data.
The MP sample consists of around 100 current UK MPs, weighted to be representative of the distribution of parliament. This means that the representation of MPs across different parties depends on their representation in parliament. Currently the numbers of MPs from Labour and Conservative parties are large enough to conduct cross-party comparisons, but this is not the case for other parties.
The public sample consists of around 2000 members of the general public, weighted for representativeness of the UK population.
Below is a link to a library of data visualisations created from the analyses from our tracker. They can also be found throughout the Climate Barometer topic threads. If you’re interested in a question, topic, or breakdown that isn’t shown on our website, feel free to reach out and request it.
The Climate Barometer Tracker has followed public and MP support for local renewable infrastructure in their area since 2022. Since the beginning, we have pointed to a perception gap between the (high) public support for local renewables projects such as new solar parks and wind farms, and what the public and MPs think support and opposition looks like.
The latest wave of the tracker shows that this gap remains: public support for new local renewable projects remains high. People, and their representatives continue to underestimate this support, and overestimate opposition.
In this wave, we also asked those who have personal experience with local infrastructure projects, how they felt about them. Overall, those who have a newly proposed project in their area, and those who have a fully or partially built one, feel accepting, proud, and relieved. A minority report feeling worry, anger, and upsetness, but for the most part, emotional responses are positive.
Those experiencing the most negative emotions were people living in areas where a renewable energy project had been rejected.
Climate change didn’t cause the culture wars, but culture wars are making climate change harder to solve.
In new research from Kings College London (KCL), divisions over climate change are seen as worse than divisions over Brexit, with the public more likely to say there is tension between climate change sceptics and believers (64%) than between Leavers and Remainers (52%), or between younger and older generations (45%).
This is despite the broad-based consensus on the importance of the issue that Climate Barometer data evidences, and which is seen consistently in wider research (e.g. the recent Britain Talks Climate & Nature report, which highlights widespread care for nature, wildlife and the benefits that the transition to clean, renewable energy can bring).
More new research (from Hope Not Hate) diving into the differences between people who intend to vote Reform highlights climate change as one of the dividing lines among a disjointed coalition of factions. ‘Squeezed Stewards’ (in an echo of More in Common’s ‘Rooted Patriots’ segment, who have high levels of threat perception around environmental risks) care about nature and acknowledge the climate crisis. But the ‘Hardline Conservatives’ subgroup of Reform backers are much more likely to be in the minority of people who reject action on climate change entirely.
Our latest public opinion data & a new measure of climate opinion
Here’s how public views have shifted over the summer – and introducing a new ‘health check’ of climate opinion.