DECC’s climate and energy survey: One poll cooked five ways
From concern about energy bills to support for renewables, via the slightly more surreal avenue of suggesting the data is somehow untrustworthy, we examine five publications’ takes on the government’s latest energy and climate poll.
The Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has released the latest instalment of its quarterly Public Attitudes Survey yesterday. Based on interviews with 2,000 people, the poll aims to track how the public views DECC’s policy priorities – including on energy efficiency, energy infrastructure and reducing emissions.
Media reports
Every opinion poll tells a story – though the five publications we review here have come up with rather different takes on what the narrative from DECC’s polling might be.
1. Energy bill concern: 59 per cent
Carbon Brief top-lines on public concern over energy bills. The survey found that more people than ever before – 59 per cent – were worried about paying their energy bills. Interestingly, while some areas of the media have devoted a significant amount of column inches to claims about the effect of renewable subsidies on bills, our own polling indicates people tend to lay the blame for rising bills on energy company profits rather than so-called green taxes.
2. Public support for renewables: the 82 per cent “love affair”
BusinessGreen‘s article highlights that a significant majority of respondents expressed support for renewable power – 82 per cent. 68 per cent of people expressed support for onshore wind power – with only 11 per cent against, it adds. Overall, says BusinessGreen: “Brits’ love affair with renewables’ grows ever stronger”, which is perhaps what you’d expect them to focus on.
3. A minority sees climate change as the top priority for the country: 5 per cent
The Daily Mail takes a different perspective with a piece entitled ‘Fear over fuel bills reach record high: but climate change is top concern for just one in twenty’ -adding that subsidies for renewables are contributing to rising bills.
Although DECC’s survey found that two thirds of those it asked were concerned about climate change, just five per cent said it is the biggest threat facing the country – thus providing the Mail with its headline. Unsurprisingly, given the current economic climate, most said unemployment is the greatest challenge for the UK.
It also mentions that support for renewables has risen – though you wouldn’t guess necessarily which technologies are popular. It says solar panels are among the most popular and onshore wind is “one of the least”, rather downplaying its 68 per cent approval rating.
4. Renewables and apple pie
Greenpeace’s Energydesk blog gives a useful breakdown of the main results in the poll. People are more worried about energy bills than mortgages. And they’re slightly more worried about energy security than climate change – a result we also found when we conducted our poll.
Energydesk also wonders if support for renewables isn’t an “apple pie” question – something people say they like when asked about it- and points out that the survey didn’t cover the cost of renewables. According to Carbon Brief’s polling, however, most people appear to want to see investment in green technologies like renewables as part of the economic recovery.
5. We don’t believe the government
The Daily Telegraph is highly sceptical of DECC’s results showing only eleven per cent oppose onshore wind – so much so that it rather bizarrely ran its own poll on whether DECC’s polling is credible. It’s not exactly clear how the Telegraph thinks the result may have been achieved – though it points to previous polling that suggests lower support for wind.
At the time of writing, more than 80 per cent of Telegraph readers who took the poll think DECC’s results aren’t to be trusted.
That’s perhaps not surprising, given that just seven per cent of those we polled said they trusted politicians to give them correct information about climate change, while a whopping 64 per cent said they don’t trust them. And out of the Telegraph readers we polled, even more – 74 per cent – said they don’t trust politicians.
Interestingly, Telegraph readers don’t seem to trust the Telegraph much either, however: just 30 per cent said they trusted their daily newspaper.
We should point out that we don’t fare much better – just 7 per cent said they trusted blogs and social media to give them accurate information on climate change. Scientists emerge the clear winners, with 69 per cent saying they trust them on climate.
What does it mean?
Polling expert Leo Barasi, who collaborated with Carbon Brief in producing our polling, has criticised DECC’s poll in the past. He says the questions are confusing – for example leaving the timescale for global warming that it’s asking people about unclear – making the results potentially hard to interpret.
Barasi tells Carbon Brief:
“If you look closely enough at any poll you can usually find something that supports your narrative. The Mail [for example] has tried to turn this into an anti-renewables story, but the truth is almost no-one thinks rising energy costs are to do with wind farms, as we saw in Carbon Brief’s recent poll.”
Just how a media outlet decides to package up polling for its readers will depend on a number of factors. Though as our own polling shows, neither politicians nor the outlets in question should expect many people to believe them