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Heatmap’s inaugural survey finds broad support for climate action.
Americans are increasingly feeling the effects of climate change and overwhelmingly believe the United States needs to do more to address the issue, the inaugural Heatmap Climate Poll found.
Conducted in late February by Benenson Strategy Group, the poll arrives during a moment of heightened media attention to climate change. Earlier this week, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its synthesis report, which emphasizes the dangers posed by global warming as well as the need for governments to act swiftly and decisively. In the U.S., the implementation of President Biden's landmark climate law, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, is well underway.
Overall, nearly three-quarters of all Americans say it is important for the United States to mitigate the effects of climate change, including 89% of Democrats and 61% of Republicans.
A plurality of Americans (47%) said they are feeling increasingly pessimistic about climate change, versus 28% who said they were increasingly optimistic and 24% who said it had no effect on them.
Half of Americans also attest to having been personally impacted by climate change, with 35% saying an immediate family member has experienced a serious climate-related event like a hurricane, tornado, blizzard, or flash flood that resulted in either personal harm or property damage.
“In more than two decades of polling Americans’ attitudes on a wide range of issues, including climate change, I have rarely seen such unequivocal support for action now by the U.S. government, to lead on mitigating the harmful effects of climate change on our planet,” says Joel Benenson, founder and CEO of Benenson Strategy Group. “Our survey shows that Americans want their politicians to do more, but fear they lack the will that is so urgently needed as people here at home and all over the world are increasingly impacted by extreme climate events.”
Indeed, Americans seem to have given up on government’s ability to make a difference. A plurality believes that individuals will have a greater positive effect on climate change in the near future than companies or the federal government.
Americans want corporations to do more but are skeptical of their motivations. Sixty-seven percent feel it is important for large corporations to mitigate the effects of climate change, but almost as many (64%) think their pledges to do so are just for appearances. Many also identify the sway that big corporations, lobbyists, and special interest groups have in Washington to be among the most significant obstacles to achieving renewable and sustainable solutions.
Americans were also largely in the dark about the details of the Inflation Reduction Act. Sixty-three percent reported knowing not much or nothing about the bill.
Americans reported varying degrees of interest in sustainability. Eighty percent acknowledged that sustainable consumer choices often involve some level of personal sacrifice; a surprisingly significant 27% of Americans either eat no meat (10%) or would like to stop eating meat in the future (17%). Almost half of Americans say they want to one day power their homes with solar panels (46%).
Interest in electric vehicles was also high. Nearly half of the respondents either currently drive an electric vehicle (8%) or would like to do so in the future (39%). Despite high levels of general interest, though, close to one in two Americans (45%) were unaware that the Inflation Reduction Act includes a provision to give up to $7,500 in consumer credit for the purchase of qualified vehicles.
The debate over how to proceed with Russia is dividing Americans. About half (52%) believe sanctions should remain in place as an effective way of punishing Moscow and limiting its ability to wage war in Ukraine, even if it means families ultimately pay more for energy in the U.S. The remaining respondents (48%) said sanctions should be lifted to reduce energy costs for American families. Separately, a plurality of respondents described the rising cost of living for families year after year as “an extremely serious problem" for climate change mitigation.
In the coming days and weeks, Heatmap will offer further analysis of the survey's results, including closer looks at the challenges of decarbonization, interest in electric vehicles, the hopes for individual action, and the toll of climate change on mental health.
The Heatmap Climate Poll of 1,000 American adults was conducted by Benenson Strategy Group via online panels from Feb. 15 to 20, 2023. The survey included interviews with Americans in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.02 percentage points. You can download the topline results below:
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And more on the week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy projects.
1. Lawrence County, Alabama – We now have a rare case of a large solar farm getting federal approval.
2. Virginia Beach, Virginia – It’s time to follow up on the Coastal Virginia offshore wind project.
3. Fairfield County, Ohio – The red shirts are beating the greens out in Ohio, and it isn’t looking pretty.
4. Allen County, Indiana – Sometimes a setback can really set someone back.
5. Adams County, Illinois – Hope you like boomerangs because this county has approved a solar project it previously denied.
6. Solano County, California – Yet another battery storage fight is breaking out in California. This time, it’s north of San Francisco.
A conversation with Elizabeth McCarthy of the Breakthrough Institute.
This week’s conversation is with Elizabeth McCarthy of the Breakthrough Institute. Elizabeth was one of several researchers involved in a comprehensive review of a decade of energy project litigation – between 2013 and 2022 – under the National Environment Policy Act. Notably, the review – which Breakthrough released a few weeks ago – found that a lot of energy projects get tied up in NEPA litigation. While she and her colleagues ultimately found fossil fuels are more vulnerable to this problem than renewables, the entire sector has a common enemy: difficulty of developing on federal lands because of NEPA. So I called her up this week to chat about what this research found.
The following conversation was lightly edited for clarity.
So why are you so fixated on NEPA?
Personally and institutionally, [Breakthrough is] curious about all regulatory policy – land use, environmental regulatory policy – and we see NEPA as the thing that connects them all. If we understand how that’s functioning at a high level, we can start to pull at the strings of other players. So, we wanted to understand the barrier that touches the most projects.
What aspects of zero-carbon energy generation are most affected by NEPA?
Anything with a federal nexus that doesn’t include tax credits. Solar and wind that is on federal land is subject to a NEPA review, and anything that is linear infrastructure – transmission often has to go through multiple NEPA reviews. We don’t see a ton of transmission being litigated over on our end, but we think that is a sign NEPA is such a known obstacle that no one even wants to touch a transmission line that’ll go through 14 years of review, so there’s this unknown graveyard of transmission that wasn’t even planned.
In your report, you noted there was a relatively small number of zero-carbon energy projects in your database of NEPA cases. Is solar and wind just being developed more frequently on private land, so there’s less of these sorts of conflicts?
Precisely. The states that are the most powered by wind or create the most wind energy are Texas and Iowa, and those are bypassing the national federal environmental review process [with private land], in addition to not having their own state requirements, so it’s easier to build projects.
What would you tell a solar or wind developer about your research?
This is confirming a lot of things they may have already instinctually known or believed to be true, which is that NEPA and filling out an environmental impact statement takes a really long time and is likely to be litigated over. If you’re a developer who can’t avoid putting your energy project on federal land, you may just want to avoid moving forward with it – the cost may outweigh whatever revenue you could get from that project because you can’t know how much money you’ll have to pour into it.
Huh. Sounds like everything is working well. I do think your work identifies a clear risk in developing on federal lands, which is baked into the marketplace now given the pause on permits for renewables on federal lands.
Yeah. And if you think about where the best places would be to put these technologies? It is on federal lands. The West is way more federal land than anywhere else in the county. Nevada is a great place to put solar — there’s a lot of sun. But we’re not going to put anything there if we can’t put anything there.
What’s the remedy?
We propose a set of policy suggestions. We think the judicial review process could be sped along or not be as burdensome. Our research most obviously points to shortening the statute of limitations under the Administrative Procedures Act from six years to six months, because a great deal of the projects we reviewed made it in that time, so you’d see more cases in good faith as opposed to someone waiting six years waiting to challenge it.
We also think engaging stakeholders much earlier in the process would help.
The Bureau of Land Management says it will be heavily scrutinizing transmission lines if they are expressly necessary to bring solar or wind energy to the power grid.
Since the beginning of July, I’ve been reporting out how the Trump administration has all but halted progress for solar and wind projects on federal lands through a series of orders issued by the Interior Department. But last week, I explained it was unclear whether transmission lines that connect to renewable energy projects would be subject to the permitting freeze. I also identified a major transmission line in Nevada – the north branch of NV Energy’s Greenlink project – as a crucial test case for the future of transmission siting in federal rights-of-way under Trump. Greenlink would cross a litany of federal solar leases and has been promoted as “essential to helping Nevada achieve its de-carbonization goals and increased renewable portfolio standard.”
Well, BLM has now told me Greenlink North will still proceed despite a delay made public shortly after permitting was frozen for renewables, and that the agency still expects to publish the record of decision for the line in September.
This is possible because, as BLM told me, transmission projects that bring solar and wind power to the grid will be subject to heightened scrutiny. In an exclusive statement, BLM press secretary Brian Hires told me via e-mail that a secretarial order choking out solar and wind permitting on federal lands will require “enhanced environmental review for transmission lines only when they are a part of, and necessary for, a wind or solar energy project.”
However, if a transmission project is not expressly tied to wind or solar or is not required for those projects to be constructed… apparently, then it can still get a federal green light. For instance in the case of Greenlink, the project itself is not explicitly tied to any single project, but is kind of like a transmission highway alongside many potential future solar projects. So a power line can get approved if it could one day connect to wind or solar, but the line’s purpose cannot solely be for a wind or solar project.
This is different than, say, lines tied explicitly to connecting a wind or solar project to an existing transmission network. Known as gen-tie lines, these will definitely face hardships with this federal government. This explains why, for example, BLM has yet to approve a gen-tie line for a wind project in Wyoming that would connect the Lucky Star wind project to the grid.
At the same time, it appears projects may be given a wider berth if a line has other reasons for existing, like improving resilience on the existing grid, or can be flexibly used by not just renewables but also fossil energy.
So, the lesson to me is that if you’re trying to build transmission infrastructure across federal property under this administration, you might want to be a little more … vague.