What will it take for the Sunday Times to report its climate and energy polling?
Poll results are a boon to journalists – especially if you’ve commissioned the poll. You have an instant story giving the public’s answer to a question you want to ask. So why has the Sunday Times failed for the third time to report the results of its most recent polling questions on the UK energy mix – and what would it take for that to change?
Support for renewables
The Sunday Times’s most recent YouGov poll, conducted last Thursday and Friday, indicates that the majority of the UK public wants an increase in wind and solar energy capacity – 55 per cent and 72 per cent respectively – in the UK, and less oil and coal-fired generation. 45 per cent wanted to see oil powered stations deployed less and 43 per cent wanted less coal. Attitudes to gas were more mixed: 36 per cent – the largest group – want to see less gas-powered generation.
The public also appears to favour an increase in the UK’s nuclear capacity and seems divided over whether or not the government should support new shale gas exploitation. 32 per cent said the government should go ahead with shale gas, compared to 30 per cent who said it shouldn’t. 38 per cent said they don’t know.
The results chime with the a UK-wide poll published last week, conducted for the Co-operative by polling company ICM. Asked to choose between having a wind turbine or a shale gas well near their home, 67 per cent of respondents favoured a turbine over 11 per cent who support the gas development. Overall, 49 per cent of people said they would support a wind turbine being erected within two miles of their home, with 22 per cent against.
People blame energy companies for higher bills
Fifty-eight per cent of respondents believe rising energy bills are down to energy companies taking bigger profits. Only 17 per cent of respondents answered that the rising price of oil and gas was mainly responsible for increasing energy bills. And despite campaigns in some news outlets and statements by politicians like George Osborne and Nigel Farage blaming the government’s efforts to cut carbon emissions, only 11 per cent of respondents agreed that bills are rising mainly due to the cost of these measures.
This result might be a reflection of what’s in the headlines at the moment, reflecting public anger at the news that energy bills would go up significantly this year. In addition, YouGov conducted the survey last week when Ofgem proposed a new, simpler tariff system and David Cameron caused confusion, apparently announcing ahead of Ofgem’s proposal that he would force energy companies to put consumers on their lowest tariffs.
The Sunday Times asks another intriguing question that appears to complicate the result, though. It says:
“Currently energy companies are obliged to meet the costs of meeting the government’s energy targets for reducing carbon emissions, including things like offering subsidised insulation or boilers to customers to help them reduce their energy usage. The cost of all these measures is passed onto customers through higher bills. Do you think this is justified or unjustified?”
In response, 71 per cent said it was unjustified while 14 per cent said it was justified. This question is interesting because it focuses on the measures in the government’s Green Deal, designed to make the UK’s housing stock more energy efficient. But it only focuses on half of the Green Deal proposition, however. It ignores the Green Deal’s golden rule – that the savings from installing the measures must be equal or greater than the cost on people’s energy bills. Will the public be swayed by such assurances, though?
The response seems to reflect confusion about what the Green Deal is designed to do, which may worry politicians given that it was launched this month. But it seems that the question is designed to engender a negative reaction. Energy bills have already increased and it’s likely that people will react negatively to any suggestion that they may continue to do so if they’re not given the other side of the story – that households that buy the “subsidised insulation” should enjoy lower energy bills.
Polling specialist Leo Barasi, who runs the blog Noise of the Crowd told Carbon Brief:
“You can’t make people say anything in a poll but you certainly can encourage them to give particular answers. Questions that only present one side of the argument are useful for organisations that want to see how they can shift public opinion. But the results should never be presented as a fair reflection of what people actually think.”
Why is the Sunday Times ignoring its polling results?
As we’ve noticed before, the Sunday Times appears unwilling to publish the results of its YouGov polling questions on climate science and energy matters. In 2011, it decided not to report the results of a survey it commissioned, which again showed majority support for an expansion of renewable power. After the Sunday Times ignored the results, the Guardian reported them instead.
And in June, it reported just half of the answers it received on attitudes to energy and climate change – with a careful spin. Under the headline ‘ Cooling off‘, the Sunday Times claimed less than half the public believe that climate change is manmade – down from 55 per cent in 2008 to 43 per cent in June 2012.
Yet the full version of the poll results reveal that, when compared to results from 2010, the last time YouGov asked the question, belief that climate change is manmade had risen by four per cent. There’s no way to know whether the trend toward “belief” has changed this time round, however, as there are no questions about climate change in October’s survey.
So what would it take for the Sunday Times to report its climate and energy polling?
What does the Sunday Times’s climate polling tell us? Well, to answer our own question, it seems that going on what’s happened previously, the Sunday Times probably would report its own climate and energy polling if people change their minds and decide they don’t agree with climate science or don’t want more renewable energy sources. As Barasi says:
“Newspapers commission polls to help them build exciting news stories. If the poll shows something dramatic that chimes with their readers, it’ll use it. If it gives the wrong answer, that doesn’t fit with the story the paper wants to tell, it doesn’t need to report it. Most of the time there will be something else they can use and the disappointing finding can be buried on the pollster’s website.”
This is a shame, though. Aside from some encouraging data for attempts to cut the UK’s emissions by decarbonising the power supply, the survey highlights that on issues ranging from shale gas to the Green Deal and the reasons why energy bills have gone up, energy policymakers have a long way to go to help people understand the changes happening in the UK’s energy landscape.