Skip to main content

UK public support for renewables falls- slightly

 The latest Public Attitudes Tracker from the UK Department of Energy Security and Net Zero says UK public support for renewables is down from 87% in 2021 to 80% now, with opposition rising from 1 to 4%, with solar and wind loosing some support. Solar is at 86%, down from 88% last year, offshore wind is 80%, down from 83%, on shore wind is 73%, down from 77%. Only 37% say they’d be happy with an onshore wind farm nearby, down from 43%, while just 47% support local solar farms, down from 53%, with local opposition at 14%, up from 9%. Crucially, only 69% believe the renewables industry delivers economic benefits to the UK, down from 74%. 

You might see that as a Farage effect, given that his Reform party is strongly anti-renewables and very critical of the Labour governments Net Zero policy-  a  political view now it seems shared by the Conservative party.  There does seem to have been more media coverage of views like this, with local opposition to solar farm projects being especially newsworthy. For its part, to back up its commitment to deliver 45-47 GW of solar by 2030, the government has pledged to see off what it portrays as ‘infrastructure blockers’ and has been revising the planning system. So, there could be more controversies. But the government seems keen to press ahead: since July, it says it has ‘taken action to deploy the technology at scale, approving nearly 3 GW of nationally significant solar - more than in the last 14 years combined’. 

Solar farms may be a bone of some contention in some locations, although the Solar Lobby seems convinced that the problems are relatively minor and indeed that support for solar is actually rising. New research commissioned by Solar Energy UK has claimed that 77% of the UK public supports solar development in their local area. Solar Power Portal noted that the survey, conducted by Copper Consultancy, ‘explores attitudes towards solar PV power plants, revealing that since 2023, there has been a 4% increase in backing for solar PV development’, with there being ‘a distinct sway of opinion towards support for solar energy’. A total of 68% of those surveyed evidently said their opinion of solar energy had changed in the last 12 months, with 55% becoming more supportive of the industry and 13% becoming more opposed. So some divergent survey results, with, on the ground, a report from MSC, the Microgeneration Support Scheme, saying that home solar installation levels were 22% higher in the first half of 2025 than in the first half of 2024, reaching their highest rate since 2015.

Historically, on land wind was subject to some local opposition, indeed more so than solar farms, and the new DESNZ data suggests that this is still the case, even if it’s still relatively well supported overall, at 73%. But, having lifted a de-facto ban on land based wind projects in England imposed by David Cameron’s Government in 2016, the Labour government is now pushing ahead with a 40-step plan to accelerate delivery of new onshore wind farms. It’s looking to have at least 27GW of onshore wind by 2030 and maybe 29GW. To smooth things on, it has talked of offering reduced power bills for people near to new pylon lines.  It has also been changing the planning system, for example by bringing large onshore wind projects back into the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) regime in England, in line with other energy infrastructure. That means the government would have the final say on approving wind farm projects larger than 100 MW, rather than local councils, although there will still be local consultation. 

It will be interesting to see how and if these and other policy changes will influence the data in next public attitudes survey. Some of the changes will take a while to have an impact. For example, the government has announced that all new build homes will have solar panels by default to help bring down bills for families, through the Future Homes Standard. Renters and those living in apartments should also soon enjoy the benefits of solar as the government sets out the steps required to make portable ‘plug-in’ balcony solar available in the UK. 

Given this sort of thing, some look to solar booming, with increased output as capacity expands, with  some suggesting it might even reach 90GW by 2035. Meantime, offshore wind is still popular, with a longer-term theoretical potential put at up to 120GW and fewer constraints than for on shore wind or solar - although there are some, for example due to wake effects, as I explored in my last post.  There is also tidal and wave power, still getting 81% of public support in the tracker, with, as I noted in an earlier post, several tens of GW potential.  Biomass energy, by contrast, has always been a bit less popular (only 69% support it in the tracker) and, of late, there has been reduction in financial and policy support for large-scale wood chip combustion, but there is still a large potential for using farm and domestic waste for biogas production.  

Overall then the UK is very well placed for most renewables, and even if there can be some local objections, they are mostly from a small minority, a few percent. Interestingly the DESNZ tracker found that opposition to the construction of new nuclear power stations was 37% in Spring 2025, down from 41% in Spring 2024. Support remained stable at 22%. The primary reasons for opposition were said to be fear over safety and security (74%), and the disposal of radioactive nuclear waste (69%). The survey was carried out before the recent proposal for mass deployment of Small Modular Reactors around the county. For example, around 21 SMR sites have been proposed for the Midlands. It will be interesting to see how that, and the commitment to build a new large plant at Sizewell, goes down in the next opinion tracker…

There’s certainly been quite a lot of pro-nuclear media coverage of late, even in the Guardian. Some say support for nuclear is growing due to concerns about renewables and about climate change. Well this Springs tracker doesn’t offer much in the way of corroboration for that. Yes, renewables have lost a few percentage points and opposition to nuclear is down slightly, but the tracker says that concern about climate change are also down slightly, declining from 80% in Winter 2024 to 77% in Spring 2025. But maybe that’s also due to a Farage effect! Who knows! But it’s interesting that 88% of Europeans now back EU measures to boost renewables.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Renewables beat nuclear - even with full balancing included

A new Danish study comparing nuclear and renewable energy systems (RES) concludes that, although nuclear systems require less flexibility capacity than renewable-only systems, a renewable energy system is cheaper than a nuclear based system, even with full backup: it says ‘lower flexibility costs do not offset the high investment costs in nuclear energy’.  It’s based on a zero-carbon 2045 smart energy scenario for Denmark, although it says its conclusions are valid elsewhere given suitable adjustments for local conditions. ‘The high investment costs in nuclear power alongside cost for fuel and operation and maintenance more than tip the scale in favour of the Only Renewables scenario. The costs of investing in and operating the nuclear power plants are simply too high compared to Only Renewables scenario, even though more investment must be put into flexibility measures in the latter’.  In the Danish case, it says that ‘the scenario with high nuclear implementation is 1.2 bil...

The IEA set out a way ahead

The International Energy Agency's new Global Energy Roadmap sets a pathway to net zero carbon by 2050, with, by 2040, the global electricity sector reaching net-zero emissions. It wants no investment in new fossil fuel supply projects, and no further final investment decisions for new unabated coal plants. And by 2035, it calls for no sales of new internal combustion engine passenger cars. Instead it looks to ‘the immediate and massive deployment of all available clean and efficient energy technologies, combined with a major global push to accelerate innovation’.  The pathway calls for annual additions of solar PV to reach 630 GW by 2030, and those of wind power to reach 390 GW. All in, this is four times the record level set in 2020. By 2050 it wants about 24,000 GW of wind and solar to be in place. A major push to increase energy efficiency is also seen as essential, with the global rate of energy efficiency improvements averaging 4% a year through 2030, about three times the av...

Nuclear- not good vibrations in France

France is having problems with nuclear power.  It was once the poster child for nuclear energy, which, after a rapid government funded build-up in the1980s based on standard Westinghouse Pressurised-water Reactor (PWR) designs, at one point supplied around 75% of its power, with over 50 reactors running around the country. Mass deployment of similar designs meant that there were economies of scale and given that it was a state-run programme, the government could supply low-cost funding and power could be supplied to consumers relatively cheaply. But the plants are now getting old, and there has been a long running debate over what to do to replace them: it will be expensive given the changed energy market, with cheaper alternatives emerging. At one stage, after the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011, it was proposed by the socialist government to limit nuclear to supplying just 50% of French power by 2025, with renewables to be ramped up.  That began to look quite sensible wh...