UK: New Government poll shows increase in support for onshore wind energy

Support for offshore wind also remained rock solid at 74%. There was an increase in support for Britain’s wave and tidal energy industry, which went up to 74%.

Public support for hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking’ for shale gas fell from 26% to 24%.

RenewableUK’s Director of Policy, Dr Gordon Edge, said: “It’s great to see public support for onshore wind is increasing, with more than two-thirds of people consistently saying they want Britain to make use of it, and that support for offshore wind and wave & tidal energy remains even higher.

That’s why it’s so hard to understand why the Conservative party is turning its back on onshore wind, threatening to kill off the industry if it wins the next election. Independent polls show that David Cameron is totally wrong to claim that people are “fed up with” onshore wind – they show the reverse is actually true, and that being anti-wind is a net vote loser.

We hope that as manifestos are being written the Conservatives will see how misguided it would be to oppose such a popular technology as onshore wind”

The survey, the 12^th in DECC’s Public Attitudes Tracker series, used face-to-face interviews with a representative sample of 2,119 households in the UK.

The full data can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/public-attitudes-tracking-survey-wave-12

Support for onshore wind in the previous wave of DECC Public Attitudes Tracker findings, published in November 2014, was 67% and opposition was 12%. Support for wave & tidal energy was 73%. Support for offshore wind remained at 74%