Energy Crisis and Public Perception of the Renewable Energy Transition

• In Event: Energy, Politics, and the Public

Abstract

Research Question
How do energy crises affect the public's perception of the transition to clean energy and the broader issue of climate change? The existent literature is non-conclusive on whether the tradeoff between environmental and economic welfare exists at the individual level (Mildenberger & Leiserowitz, 2017). Considering citizens' short-term, issue-specific, and long-term pro-environmental preferences, a more nuanced perspective toward this relationship is warranted.

In this project, we explore the effect of energy crises on public support for the renewable energy transition, how framing such messages can facilitate, not hinder, costly climate mitigation efforts, and how individual values, political orientations, and income levels interact with the effect of framing. Specifically, we leverage the energy crisis caused by the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. We frame the energy crisis as threatening a country's energy independence or energy affordability. We investigate how these framings can encourage public support for the renewable energy transition policies despite their weakened concerns about climate change when faced with crises.

Theory
The environment Kuznets curve (EKC) theory hypothesizes that economic growth leads to environmental improvement when income per capita reaches a high level (Stern, 2017). In developed countries, the focus on air pollution has shifted to carbon dioxide, linking the EKC theory with carbon footprint and climate mitigation (Stern, 2017). More recent scholarship has focused on the relationship between acute societal crises and climate concerns. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals significantly deprioritized their concerns about climate change (Beiser-McGrath, 2022). The "finite pool of worry" theory suggests that climate concerns diminish as other worries become prominent (Evensen et al., 2021).

Energy is at the heart of climate change, and the transition to renewable energy is the key to tackling climate change. Public perceptions of the clean energy transition intertwine with concerns about energy security. Demski et al. (2018) conceptualized energy security by specifying its five dimensions: reliability, affordability, vulnerability, import dependency, and fossil fuel dependency. Across 23 European countries and Israel, the highest levels of concern were observed for affordability, fossil fuel dependency, and import dependency (Demski et al., 2018). From a communication point of view, framing energy issues is consequential for public support of such issues (Whitmarsh & Corner, 2017).

Based on the extant literature, we argue that when the dependency on foreign fossil fuels and the resulting threat is emphasized, or when individuals experience an affordability crisis caused by uncertainties in energy supply, the public may perceive transitioning to renewable energy as imperative. In the meantime, concerns about climate change may decrease due to individuals' "finite pool of worry" (Evensen et al., 2021).

Data, Methods, and Hypotheses
We conducted a survey experiment in the U.K. in January 2024 to test the effects of three narrative frames (energy affordability, energy dependency, and climate change). The narrative frames are designed based on factual information about the current energy crisis or climate change in the U.K. We use the survey platform Prolific to recruit 2,880 respondents with purposive sampling based on income and age. We randomly assign respondents in each income-age combination into the four conditions of equal size (720).

We use simple OSL regression models with interaction effects to test the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1: Support for the clean energy transition is higher in the dependency/affordability/climate condition than in the control condition.
Hypothesis 2: Concerns for climate change are lower in energy-related conditions than in the climate-change condition.
Hypothesis 3: The treatment effect of the dependency condition is more pronounced for individuals who exhibit strong security values/lean right politically. The treatment effect of the affordability condition is more pronounced for individuals with lower income levels.

Contributions
Theoretically, we push beyond probing the relationship between generic societal crises and concerns about climate change. Our study carries significant policy implications as far-reaching geopolitical conflicts and intensifying climate disasters become more frequent and threaten energy independence and affordability. Despite the public's decreased concern about climate change, climate mitigation policies can be framed in light of the crisis to draw support from citizens across the ideological spectrum and income strata. We propose such frames based on a theoretical understanding of individuals' values and financial situations' role in their attitudes toward energy policies and climate change.

Authors

• Catherine Chen, Hamilton College

• Verena Benoit