Emotions play a key role in shaping people’s views on renewable energy: Study

Concern and worry over climate change result in support for renewable energy but don’t necessarily translate into opposition to fossil fuels, according to a study led by Steve Lorteau, doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law.

Lorteau and researchers in psychology and sociology from the University of British Columbia, Université de Montréal, University of Ottawa and Université de Saint-Boniface set out to examine how emotions affect people’s perceptions of energy issues – and what implications this could have on shaping policies and communicating the impacts of climate change.

Their paper, published in Energy Policy, lays out the results of a meta-analysis on the link between climate concerns and worries and opinions about energy sources, based on data from over 85,000 participants in 36 countries. The studies asked questions such as, “Are you concerned about climate change?” or “Are you worried about climate change?” The studies also asked participants questions about how they view different energy sources, such as support for wind, oil and gas and nuclear.

“At first, we expected that if you are concerned about climate change, you would support renewable energy like wind and solar – and oppose coal, oil and gas to the same degree. But that’s not what we found,” says Lorteau. “We found that people with concerns and worries about climate change supported renewables, but also found these emotional responses only translate into a slight opposition to fossil fuels because people really like the status quo.

“Most people consider, ‘How am I going to gas my car if there are no fossil fuels? How am I going to heat my home?’”

As a result, policymakers need to consider how people view energy and climate policy questions, since emotional aspects will shape how they view change, Lorteau says, noting this point builds on Faculty of Law Professor Brenda Cossman’s earlier work on how climate anxiety can lead people away from the political process.

“In terms of a policy outcome, people don’t want to be inconvenienced,” Lorteau says. “They seem to think that we can solve climate change by just adding more renewables to the mix while keeping the same baseline of fossil fuels, which is not the consensus among climate scientists.”

The analysis also found that climate concerns and worries were not associated with support for – or opposition to – nuclear energy. This, Lorteau says, is due to the fact that support for nuclear energy tends to depend on context and how questions are worded. For example, the questions “Do you support zero-emissions nuclear energy?” and “Would you support a nuclear facility next door to you?” resulted in equal opposition and support.

“Some countries rely heavily on nuclear energy – France being an example – and in those countries, I think [there is] some acceptance that nuclear energy is part of the status quo versus memories of where nuclear energy goes wrong and so those concerns become more salient,” he says.

For his doctoral research, Lorteau is focused on zoning laws in Canada and the U.S. and how people are concerned about losing out on environmental policy change. He says zoning laws preserve and protect the status quo of property owners while not evaluating the potential gains that can happen in society, especially when it comes to environmental initiatives.

He notes the concept of winners and losers of policy decisions is a big theme of University Professor Emeritus Michael Trebilcock’s groundbreaking research, and an influence on his own. "If the policy losers are powerful enough, have a legitimate claim or feel aggrieved, change won’t happen,” Lorteau says. 

“How do you bring environmentalism into a space that is so biased against it in big ways? You need to consider emotions, and the potential losers of a policy transition, to understand what their complaints are.”