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The Conservative Party suffered their ‘worst ever’ result at the 2024 General Election. As well as general dissatisfaction with the Conservative government, polls consistently showed that worries about the cost of living, the condition of the NHS (and for some, immigration) were the biggest influences on how people voted.
Climate change – and more broadly environmental problems like air pollution and sewage in rivers – were also cited by voters when asked to select their top three most important issues going into the election. But was climate change a ‘vote winner’ at the election?
Echoing previous research showing an appetite for greater leadership on climate change, a large (20,000 people) survey by Focal Data on behalf of Persuasion and ECIU found that 53% of voters who had switched their vote from Conservatives to Labour (or the Liberal Democrats) believed that Government policy on climate change should be going further and faster that it has been (27% thought it should be going more slowly).
And polling by More in Common on behalf of E3G went even further, showing that Rishi Sunak’s decision (in September 2023) to slow down some of the country’s net zero policy timelines had a negative impact on voters. People were twice as likely to say that delaying net zero targets was one of Sunak’s biggest mistakes, than his biggest achievements.
Whilst the General Election was not fought on climate and net zero grounds (compared with the last General Election in 2019, there were roughly 50% fewer mentions of ‘climate’ in the British media election coverage), these findings suggest that there is currently no political capital to be found in opposing green policies.
The only party standing on an anti-net zero ticket were Reform UK – but the same More in Common polling found that immigration was overwhelmingly the reason that people voted for this party. Only 4% selected Reform’s environmental policies as a reason for voting for them.
Surveys are clear that the British public supports the country’s net zero targets.
When surveys focus on specific policies (like low traffic neighbourhoods, for example), then a range of wider considerations come into play, and unsurprisingly, support for individual policies like this tends to be lower than support for net zero overall. Although, as Climate Barometer tracker data underscores, even this policy (presented as divisive in media commentary) has more support than opposition.
And this trend – of most net zero policies having greater support than opposition – is reflected in a new Ipsos survey.
In nationally representative polling from April 2024, just before the General Election was called, Ipsos reported that:
Support is highest for giving people more assistance to increase the energy efficiency of their homes (76%); frequent flyer levies (62%); and changing product pricing to reflect how environmentally friendly products are (56%).
The least popular policy tested (an exception to the rule of support outweighing opposition) was electric vehicle subsidies (39% support, 41% oppose).
However, while most net zero policies continue to enjoy majority support among Britons, Ipsos report that this support has fallen over the past two years:
Support for ensuring access to sustainable pension funds and increasing vegetarian/vegan options in food provisioning have both fallen by 8 points since 2022, support for creating low traffic neighbourhoods is down 7 points, and support for higher taxes on red meat and dairy products and electric vehicle subsidies are both down 6 ppts.
Labour and Lib Dem 2019 voters support all policies, while past Conservative voters only support a few: frequent flyer levies, changing product pricing, ensuring access to sustainable pensions, and enabling people to make energy efficiency improvements to their home.
The polling also suggested a softening of the intensity with which people report feeling worried about climate change (likely a reflection of the difficulty of maintaining a strong sense of worry about an issue that can’t be resolved in the short term), although Ipsos reported that overall levels of concern remained very high,
Polling by Opinium for the Conservative Environment Network (CEN), conducted just before the 2024 General Election was announced, suggests that playing into Reform UK’s anti-net zero stance will not be a vote winner for the Conservative party.
One important finding is that although Reform UK is (uniquely among the other mainstream parties) campaigning on an anti-net zero ticket, climate change is not currently a salient issue for Reform voters. The CEN polling found that only 2% of Reform voters listed climate change/net zero/environment as their primary concern (the majority chose immigration as their primary concern).
This mirrors polling carried out across multiple European countries, ahead of the EU election which saw significant gains for far-right parties. In Europe, as in the UK, the rise in support for right wing parties does not appear to be driven by these parties’ policies on climate change (even if they tend to hold anti-net zero positions).
Carbon Brief has published an interactive tool which allows different aspects of climate and energy policies to be searched (and compared) for the five most popular political parties at the 2024 General Election:
“With the exception of climate-sceptic Reform, all major political parties continue to back the UK’s net-zero climate goal. Heading into the election, however, they have talked about the target in very different ways, with the Conservatives focusing on costs and Labour on benefits.
Following 14 years of Conservative government, which included the Covid-19 pandemic, the global energy crisis and Brexit, the polls overwhelmingly suggest that the opposition Labour party will take power in July.
In the interactive grid below, Carbon Brief tracks the commitments made by major political parties in their latest election manifestos. The grid covers a range of issues connected to energy and climate change.
Each entry in the grid represents a direct quote from one or more of these documents. The grid will be updated as each party publishes their manifesto.”
The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) commissioned survey data in support of a linked call for the UK to ‘reimagine’ its net zero targets. The survey (of 15,000 people) was conducted across seven European member states, as well as the UK.
Many of the findings support well-established patterns of climate change/net zero perceptions among the UK public, including:
Focusing on the lack of belief in the feasibility of net zero goals based on current government programmes (what they call the ‘delivery deficit’), the TBI argues that the UK’s net zero targets should be relaxed, on the grounds that they are out of step with public opinion, and have been made without paying sufficient attention to public concerns on cost and affordability.
The latter point is important: net zero policies will indeed be difficult to achieve without broad based public support.
But wider research is clear that across the political spectrum, people want to see more leadership on climate, not less. The ‘delivery deficit’ that the TBI identifies could just as easily be used as an argument to bring the public in, and go faster on net zero.
Following sharp criticism from the Climate Change Committee (which said the Scottish government was failing to deliver on its net zero goals and had no credible delivery strategy), a target to reduce the country’s emissions by 75% by 2030 was dropped.
The Scottish Net Zero Cabinet Secretary Màiri McAllan said she “accepted” the target was no longer achievable.
The Scottish National Party (SNP) seemed reluctant to concede the target they had set was now impossible to achieve. This stands in contrast to the rhetoric deployed by Rishi Sunak in September 2023 when he announced delays to some UK-level net zero goals, positioning them as a ‘burden’ that the government would protect voters from.
The fallout from the SNP’s announcement was immediate and significant.
The SNP’s power-sharing coalition with the Scottish Green Party was dissolved days later, with disagreement over the decision to scrap the 2030 target cited as one of the reasons for the breakdown of the agreement. Humza Yousaf subsequently resigned as First Minister.
Some commentary suggested that the disagreement over the climate targets reflected the divisiveness of net zero in Scotland, but a poll conducted whilst all of this was unfolding underscored the support among Scottish voters for the country’s net zero ambition.
The Green Alliance Net Zero policy tracker has monitored government policies since 2020. The March 2024 update compares progress against the emissions pathways set out in the Net Zero Strategy, last updated in 2023. The report concludes that across the whole economy, and for many individual sectors, there is a continued lack of progress on decarbonisation, and adds that ‘strong leadership is missing across the political spectrum’.
Beyond the material threat to decarbonisation this lack of leadership poses, Climate Barometer tracker data is clear that voters want and expect leadership on climate change.
Its absence therefore also undermines policies which require buy-in and acquiescence from the public, including the transition from gas boilers to electrified heat pumps.
In the wake of Labour’s announcement that their green investment pledge would be scaled back, the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) commissioned snap polling from Opinium.
Only 14% of people reported being ‘very aware’ of Labour’s (previously) proposed £28 billion a year investment plans. This is worth noting, as a significant amount of debate within green policy circles has focused on this specific number (but most of the public wasn’t aware of it in the first place).
Roughly double the number of people (26%) said they were ‘very aware’ of the decision to reduce the £28 billion pledge, though, suggesting that for a significant number of people, the intense media debate around whether or not Labour would ‘U-turn’ would have been the first time they had encountered the policy.
Read our analysis taking stock of what the policy shift from Labour is likely to have meant to voters here.
Commentary & Analysis
21st February 2024
In early 2024, Labour announced a reduction in its green investment commitments if it were to win power. Voters want consistency on climate change, whichever party is in power.
In an open access research paper in the journal Nature Climate Change, Charlotte Kukowski and Emma Garnett argue that reducing inequality is not simply a positive ‘co-benefit’ of well-designed climate policies (although in a cost of living crisis, the affordability of green policies is a major consideration for voter support).
Instead the authors argue that many of the behavioural changes necessary to reduce emissions from travel or food consumption are simply not possible where income inequalities remain high. The paper uses an example of rural/urban travel costs and rent prices to illustrate how it may be easier for wealthier citizens to make low carbon travel choices:
While London boasts the cheapest bus fares and the most comprehensive public transport network in the UK, it also ranks highest for house prices and rents. Although rent and property prices can be lower in rural areas than in cities, the deregulation and subsequent privatization of the UK bus network in the 1980s have led to fare increases, a marked decrease in ridership, service fragmentation, increased car ownership and dependence, and transport-associated social exclusion, which disproportionately affect poorer citizens in rural communities
The analysis and recommendations for addressing ‘carbon inequality’ offer a different way of thinking about the challenge of population-scale behaviour changes: many policies are not currently viewed as fair by the public in large part because they aren’t currently equally accessible to people across the income spectrum.
The paper concludes that addressing general inequality, in turn makes behaviour change for net zero more feasible.
In the Chancellor Jeremy Hunnt’s Autumn Statement, it was confirmed that households living near proposed new electricity transmission infrastructure (i.e. the pylons and power lines required to transmit electricity from offshore wind and other renewable sources, to households) would be offered discounts on their electricity bills. The Chancellor said:
‘Following consultation earlier this year, we confirm that we are currently minded to provide both an electricity bill discount for properties located closest to transmission network infrastructure and a wider community benefit. The wider community benefit will be co-developed by the project developer and local community to best reflect community preferences. Our response to the consultation has been published alongside this document. We intend to publish guidance on wider community benefits in 2024. This guidance will be voluntary whilst we explore options for a mandatory approach. We will provide further information on the overall community benefits policy, including bill discounts and options for developing a mandatory approach, in 2024.’
Commentary & Analysis
14th November 2023
There were bumps on the road to net zero in 2023. But did the delays and diversions reflect growing public doubts or political dividing lines?
Based on a survey of 2000 people, Public First have argued that a turn against net zero is a risky political maneuver: by testing different combinations of policy propositions with voters (on the environment and more widely) they found that green investment is one of the most universally popular offers across the electorate, and that whilst anti net-zero sentiment doesn’t move the dial much for those who agree it, for those who oppose it, its a significant vote loser. Public First reports that:
Increased investment in renewable sources and new taxes on the largest polluters in a wider policy platform makes a party 14% more electable
Delaying net zero and continued oil and gas drilling in the North Sea in a wider policy platform makes a party 10% less electable
Voters have genuine questions (and in some cases concerns) about how specific green policies will impact their personal finances and day-to-day lives. These questions should be taken seriously by campaigners and politicians alike to build public support.
But as an electoral strategy, this research shows that reducing net zero ambition, backing away from green investment, and failing to hasten the transition away from fossil fuels are vote losers, rather than winners.
The political mandate for climate action has strengthened over the past five years according to a report led by the Climate Citizens research group at Lancaster University. But the same report also notes there’s a belief among some MPs that climate concern is concentrated among middle-class and wealthier voters. One MP interviewed for the report said:
If you’re struggling you’re not going to be thinking ‘has COP26 been of success or not?’ They don’t give a damn about offshore, onshore wind, that’s completely irrelevant to their lives.
In fact, resources like Britain Talks Climate show climate change is important across social groups. And typically, the ‘loud minorities’ who oppose renewable energy projects are likely to be over-represented among wealthier constituents.
Our Climate Barometer tracker data shows that MPs underestimate the salience of the environment for voters relative to other issues.
Commentary & Analysis
20th October 2023
The Uxbridge by-election in July 2023 was not the start of a culture war on climate. But October 2023’s by-elections can’t be read as a ringing endorsement of climate policies across the board.
Has support for net zero risen or fallen since the election?
Following the General Election, there is a clear uptick in support for the country’s net zero targets. Support for net zero by 2050 is at its highest point in almost 2 years, yet enthusiasm for some flagship policies hasn’t yet caught up.