Public Attitudes and Acceptance in the Energy Transition

Effectively confronting the daunting challenge of stopping global climate change will require decarbonizing the world’s energy systems. Conversely, continuing to rely on fossil fuels will lead to more extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and disruptions to food and water security, threatening both ecosystems and society. Successful decarbonization demands major changes in public policies and regulations, and widespread uptake of new technologies.

A variety of factors influence public attitudes towards climate policies. Policies’ popularity reflects their perceived fairness, effectiveness, cost, and convenience. Individuals with more trust in major political and social institutions tend to be more supportive of climate action. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for designing policies that are both effective and politically viable. Questions that fall under this overarching topic include people’s willingness-to-pay for certain policies, distributional aspects like how resources and costs can be shared in a fair way, and how different policy designs affect public support. Other key questions include the role of trust in policymakers and institutions, the impact of political and ideological beliefs on acceptance, and how bundling policies together might enhance their feasibility.

This proposal centers on the goal conflict between the need to implement ambitious climate actions policies and ensuring that these policies are endorsed by the public. It is crucial to clarify that the goal of this initiative is not about learning how to “sell” a fixed set of policies to the public, but to understand the factors and reasons behind their support or opposition to certain measures and use that knowledge to design or tweak policies in ways that address their sentiments, preferences and concerns. If systemic policies are indeed more effective than targeting individual behavior, but are also more sensitive to public opinion, then improving our understanding of public attitudes, preferences, and sentiments is crucial to the energy transition.