Thursday 4 May 2017

Climate change worrying 71% of UK citizens

Around 71% of UK consumers say they are very or fairly concerned about climate change.

That’s according to the latest BEIS Public Attitude Tracker (PAT), which is now on its 21st wave of finding out what the public think about a variety of energy issues.

The survey of 2,180 households across the UK reveals wealthy, middle-aged people are the most worried and suggests social renters in lower social grades care the least about climate change.

A total of 42% believe global warming is caused mainly by human activity, compared to only one in 10 who believe it is as a result of natural processes.

A further 43% think it is caused by a mixture of these reasons.

Support for renewable energy has stayed high at 79%.

Two thirds of households think the UK might become too dependent on energy from other countries and are nervous the nation is not investing fast enough in alternative sources of energy.

Possible steep rises in energy prices in the future have 73% of consumers concerned, with 47% worried power cuts will become more frequent in the future.

The number of people either very or fairly worried about paying for their energy bills remained relatively unchanged at 30%.

Half of respondents said they had not considered buying an electric vehicle (EV), while 23% did not drive or need a vehicle at all.

Even though 21% stated they had thought about buying an EV, only 1% actually owned one.