Conservative voters want more renewable energy to bring down household bills
New polling commissioned by us (conducted by Omnisis) has revealed that, across political parties, the public is clamoring for more government action on household bills and that they see renewables as one of the key means of bringing down energy costs.
The Findings
58% of people intending to vote Conservative at the next election want to see more renewables deployed to bring down bills.
This was also the most popular measure to tackle the energy cost crisis among these voters.
88% of the public agree that it’s important for the government to tackle energy costs.
Only 20% of people wanted to see gas storage facilities reopened, and just 15% backed fracking, demonstrating a clear desire to move away from fossil fuels towards cleaner sources of energy to tackle high energy costs.
77% agreed the government should take the public’s views on how we generate our energy into account when deciding which types of energy project are allowed, and 75% agreed that the cost of energy should be a factor in the decision on whether to allow new onshore wind.
Why do we need to unblock onshore wind?
Onshore wind projects have had a uniquely restrictive planning system imposed on them since 2015 when new wind projects were virtually banned in England. For years people concerned about the climate crisis have been trying to get the government to unblock onshore wind.
With the energy crisis escalating in 2022, there have been renewed calls for unblocking onshore wind in order to help bring down energy prices and insulate the UK from volatile gas markets.
In December 2022 it was announced that there would be a consultation on onshore wind to review how local authorities could demonstrate local support for projects. However, the suggested changes within the consultation were incredibly weak, and would not actually allow new onshore wind projects to come forwards in England.
Why now?
Ahead of the Budget, campaigners call on the government to listen to the public, and get on with the job of unblocking onshore wind to bring down bills.
The Budget is expected to announce investment of £20bn into technologies including carbon capture and storage (CCS) on gas power and small modular nuclear reactors, both of which are hugely expensive, at an early stage of development, unproven commercially, and involve much greater risk levels than clean, cheap, secure and proven wind and solar power. Investing in CCS will lock us into gas infrastructure and we will be very unlikely to achieve 100% capture and storage of emissions from gas power stations, not to mention that onshore wind was nine times cheaper than gas power last year.
As the Chancellor prepares his Budget, he should listen to the public calling for more support on household bills, and his own voters who know that renewables are the key to cleaner, cheaper energy, not funneling billions into unproven technologies that lock in our reliance on expensive fossil fuels.