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This map of onshore fossil fuel extraction sites shows several operating opencast coal mines and dozens of oil and gas sites across England and Wales with hundreds of operational wells between them.
The latest Climate Barometer tracker data (October 2023) shows that:
Public First and Onward tested the support of 24 policies which would cut greenhouse gas emissions (some were existing government policies and some were not). All 24 received net-positive ratings looking across all voters, with energy efficiency measures, ramping up renewables (wind and solar), incentivising green home upgrades, planting trees, investment in public transport, and policies to help people switch to electric cars all proving highly popular.
Conservative voters currently did not support the phasing out of sales of new petrol/diesel cars by 2030 or gas boilers by 2035, but the report argues that:
Importantly, opposition is to targets and deadlines rather than the technologies
Understanding which net zero policies are consistently popular among the electorate is as important as understanding what the current barriers to support are for less popular policies: ‘win win’ ideas such as incentivising home upgrades/rolling out insulation are a way to hold the net zero conversation with voters on less contentious ground than, for example, low traffic neighbourhoods.
Centre-right think tank Onward (with Public First) explored Conservative voters’ attitudes towards a wide range of climate policies (some government policy, others not) in a report titled Hotting Up: How we get to net zero in a way that brings people with us
Three key takeaways are:
Voters expect ambition from the government alongside pragmatism
Support for climate action remains strong among voters, including 2019 Conservatives. The net zero by 2050 target enjoys strong support from the British public (56%) and 2019 Conservative voters (49%), far outweighing opposition (13% and 20% respectively). 43% of Conservative voters think tackling climate change is the most serious challenge facing the world, ahead of war (38%) and mass migration (38%).
Voters see shifts in net zero policy through the lens of ‘anti-politics’
The most common responses among the public if the Government was to get rid of the net zero target is that they would be worried about future generations (33%) and would consider the Conservatives to be untrustworthy (26%). With 2019 Conservative voters, the picture is more nuanced. The highest response was still that it would make them worried for future generations (28%).
Voters are cautious about costs of net zero, but optimistic about benefits
The Government should not mistake scepticism against single unfair policies for opposition to environmental policy in general. 53% of the public are willing to accept costs to tackle climate change, while 40% are not. Focus group participants were overwhelmingly negative about the ULEZ expansion to Greater London, which they saw as an unjust tax on the poor disguised as an environmental policy. Out of ten options given, net zero was the last to be blamed by the public (16%) for a higher tax burden.
The Labour Party has pledged to create Great British Energy, a new, publicly-owned clean energy company to make the UK ‘energy independent’ and deliver 100% clean energy by 2030.
The BBC report that the controversial Rosebank offshore development off Shetland has been granted consent by regulators.
Located 80 miles west of Shetland, Rosebank is the UK’s largest untapped oil field and is estimated to contain up to 300 million barrels of oil.
Our tracker data shows that there’s more support for ending drilling in the North Sea than there is opposition – by a margin of almost 10%. However – in an example of a perception gap (explore more on this in our perception gap thread), at 76%, more Conservative MPs are strongly opposed to ending North Sea drilling – a higher percentage than Conservative voters (48%). Meanwhile, while Labour MPs are slightly more in favour of ending drilling than Labour voters (66% vs. 54%).
Polling by YouGov on behalf of Global Witness shows a lack of support for fossil fuel production, and a clear age gap in perspectives on oil and gas extraction.
Depending on which party (Labour or the Conservatives) is in power after the 2024 election, demographic differences like this may become even more prominent: a Labour government that secured the support of younger voters might be in a position to move significantly faster in terms of the social license to phase out oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.
In research carried out just before Rishi Sunak’s speech announcing changes to the UK’s net zero targets in September 2023 (including a 4,000 sample, nationally-representative poll and eight focus groups of 2019 Conservative voters who are now undecided), Public First’s James Frayne argues that Sunak’s speech will have a maginally negative impact on overall support for the Conservatives. Read Frayne’s analysis here:
Sunak’s Net Zero speech may scarcely cut through to voters at all outside the bubble
Renewable energy sources such as solar and wind are among the most popular forms of energy generation among Britons. Among energy sources, solar and wind are regarded as producing the lowest emissions, and having the greatest impact when it comes to tackling climate change.
Ipsos polling shows that Britons feel split about the current quality of renewable energy infrastructure in the UK (solar/wind), with 48% rating it as very/fairly good, and 39% rating it as very/fairly poor.
The majority (70%) feel that infrastructure in Britain has not been adapted enough to cope with future changes in climate, and 65% of Britons feel that infrastructure isn’t being built quickly enough. Britons are also less resistant to increasing spending on infrastructure than citizens of other countries, even if it means higher taxes or more government borrowing. According to the public, solar energy infrastructure should be among the highest priorities for Britain’s investment (40%).
In fact, a separate poll by Ipsos shows that renewable energy features highly among the priorities for Britain, with wind and solar featuring as one of the top five “most in need of improvement” areas of Britain’s infrastructure, alongside roads, schools, hospitals, courthouses, as well as housing, and water supply/sewerage.
Underscoring the message that people are not opposed to net zero policies, but do not consider themselves in a position to foot the bill for them, Greenpeace polling of 20,000 voters found that in Blue Wall constituencies:
Taken together, these results suggest a strong appetite for a range of climate policies, so long as the right people (the wealthiest individuals and oil & gas companies) pick up the tab
In response to the government announcing changes to Net Zero policies (around the phasing out of petrol and diesel cars, and gas boilers), a survey asked people to select the words they would use to describe the government pushing back or scrapping key climate policies.
The most commonly selected word was “untrustworthy” (40%) – followed by “sensible” (29%) and chaotic (25%). Respondents said they’d describe Rishi Sunak as “reckless” (33%), “backwards” (31%), and “sensible (29%) if he were to push back these policies.
Whilst these findings suggest there’s no straightforward political capital in watering down Net Zero goals, the percentage of people selecting ‘sensible’ to both questions is also important. For some members of the public – concentrated among Conservative voters – there’s a sense of pragmatism in delaying Net Zero targets.
Wider research suggests, though, that the reason for this is important to take into account. Voters are not sceptical of green policies, but people don’t believe the government has a credible plan, that the infrastructure is ready, or that changes are currently being made affordable enough to undertake.
These are all issues that a bolder, fairer offer to voters on Net Zero could address.
Polling by Greenpeace found almost nine in ten people (87%) want to see a loophole-free windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies.
Separate polling by Green New Deal Rising found 60% support for this policy when given a list of options for funding overseas climate finance commitments (the second most popular was a wealth tax on the richest 1%).
With the amount of airtime dedicated to the government’s plans to slow down some aspects of the UK’s net zero legislation, it can be easy to forget that for a large number of voters – across the Britain’s Choice audience segments – there is an expectation that the government should do more, not less, on climate change.
In an unusual televised speech, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a set of changes to current net zero legislation. Most notably, Sunak confirmed delays to the dates on which the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles, and separately new gas-fired boilers, would be phased out.
The delays are to net zero targets that the Conservative Party itself set.
Sunak also announced that he would be ‘scrapping’ a number of policies, which in fact had not been implemented in the first place. This included ruling out any ‘new taxes’ on flights.
The changes were positioned as protecting households – already stretched by a prolonged cost-of-living crisis – from unreasonable burdens in the pursuit of net zero.
For a long time, an argument made in favour of fossil fuels (and against supposedly ‘intermittent’ renewables) was that oil and gas could provide a secure, reliable source of energy.
But as familiarity with renewables (and confidence in them) has increased, so have perceptions of the reliability of solar and wind power. At the same time, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the instability that subsequently rippled through the global energy system, doubts are growing among the public that oil and gas are in fact secure, reliable sources of energy.
This is a significant shift – and could be what ultimately underpins a faster transition away from oil and gas. At a time of global insecurity, energy sources that can provide reliable (and ‘hoegrown’) energy become even more attractive. As Luke Tryl, UK Director at More in Common writes, message testing is showing renewables, not oil and gas, winning out in terms of being a secure and reliable source of energy:
There has been a shift in how we view energy security towards renewables – message testing on anti-oil and gas arguments finds strong support for the idea they’re getting more expensive – & particularly for Loyal Nationals (Red Wall voters) the dependence on Putin worries people.
In polling carried out by Redfield & Wilton, people were asked ‘how expensive’ it will for the United Kingdom to commit to reducing carbon emissions to net zero by 2050. They report that a majority of voters (61%) believe it will ‘expensive’ or ‘very expensive’ for the country to pursue net zero targets, with only 26% agreeing that the costs of the transition have been ‘fairly applied so far’.
In this poll, people were not asked how expensive they thought it would be for them or at a household level, so it is not clear on what basis the cost estimate is being made. Wider polling shows there is a general expectation that the fossil fuel industry and energy companies should foot the bill for climate change, rather than this coming through taxation.
That said, there is a clear flag here for campaigners: the public will need convincing that the costs of the transition can be fairly applied (and that in practice they actually are).
Policies like IPPR’s ‘Fairness Lock‘ are designed to articulate what ‘fairly applied’ means in practice – aiming to protect lower-income households from the costs of green policies. And Climate Barometer tracker data (below) offers another way to gauge what ‘fair’ could look like.
We asked people to imagine that the UK taking effective action to reduce climate change required some increases in tax to pay for these efforts. Who should pay these taxes?
As the figure shows, the most popular responses are split between ‘everyone’, those who earn over £50,000 (the higher tax rate) and ‘no one’, although the balance of these responses moves around according to voting intention, underscoring the different notions of fairness held by different voters.
Comment: Polling makes misleading claims about support for clean air zones and net zero
Author of the research Matthew Goodwin describes net zero as “a pet project among an out-of-touch, morally righteous and self-serving elite.”