Environmental Polling Roundup – November 14, 2025
Headlines
Potential Energy Coalition – Americans are inclined to believe that clean energy is cheaper than fossil fuels; effective messaging clearly asserts how clean energy is now the cheapest option to meet demand and brands clean energy as unlimited, local, and proven [Article, Website with link to full report]
Navigator – Voters are much more likely to blame Trump and Republicans for rising electricity costs than Democrats [Website, Deck, Topline]
ecoAmerica – Younger Republicans are closer to Democrats in their level of concern about climate change than to older Republicans [Website, Crosstabs]
Key Takeaways
Americans are already leaning toward the idea that clean energy is cheaper than fossil fuels, and clear messaging to reinforce this idea is effective. The Potential Energy Coalition finds that Americans are more likely to believe that clean energy is cheaper than fossil fuels than to believe that it’s more expensive, a finding that is consistent with other polling from this year.
Potential Energy further finds that reinforcing this belief by clearly stating the affordability of clean energy is highly persuasive, as the following message substantially increases Americans’ beliefs that clean energy is cheaper than fossil fuels:
“Energy demand is skyrocketing–and with it, so are energy prices. Americans are struggling with electric bills that get higher and harder to predict every year. If we want lower bills, we need cheap power. And the single cheapest form of energy available is solar and wind.
Solar and wind provide electricity at prices 30-50% lower than plants powered by oil and gas. Since 2000, solar prices have fallen over 90%. Oil and gas, on the other hand, are still expensive. And they’re easily affected by wars, trade, and tariffs.
We need affordable power. It’s time to tap into the cheapest energy sources we have to bring bills down for everyday people.”
Based on their latest research, Potential Energy further recommends that advocates define clean energy with the characteristics that people most associate with affordable energy–including that it is local, unlimited, and proven.
Republicans are not a monolithic audience on climate change, as many younger Republicans split with their party on the issue. We often analyze polling results by partisanship, and there’s a simple reason for this: partisan affiliation predicts Americans’ attitudes about the environment and energy more than any other demographic, social, or cultural characteristic.
Beneath the surface, however, there are significant rifts within the Republican party on climate and environmental issues. For example, there are some notable differences between the Republican party’s leaders and its voters: whereas Trump dismisses climate change as a “hoax” and is attempting to undermine the U.S. clean energy industry, many Republicans acknowledge that climate change is a serious threat and the majority of Republicans want to expand solar energy.
Within the Republican electorate, there are also some significant fault lines on climate and energy issues—particularly between different age groups. ecoAmerica finds that younger Republicans under 45 are actually closer to Democrats in their level of climate concern than they are to older Republicans. Pew has similarly found large differences between younger and older Republicans on climate and energy issues, with younger Republicans widely recognizing the reality of human-caused climate change, supporting the expansion of wind and solar, and showing far less enthusiasm for fossil fuel expansion than older Republicans.
Full Roundup
Potential Energy Coalition – Americans are inclined to believe that clean energy is cheaper than fossil fuels; effective messaging clearly asserts how clean energy is now the cheapest option to meet demand and brands clean energy as unlimited, local, and proven [Article, Website with link to full report]
Americans blame a combination of corporate and political actors for their rising energy prices, but not clean energy. Potential Energy asked Americans who say that their electricity bills have increased and are causing them stress (a majority of those sampled) who or what they blame for the increase in their electricity bills. Below are the results of their open-ended responses, coded by category:
- Electric/utility companies – 30%
- Policy or politicians – 18%
- Weather factors – 15%
- Economy or inflation – 10%
- Personal usage – 10%
- Corporate greed – 8%
- Energy infrastructure – 7%
- Clean energy 2%
As this data shows, only 2% cite clean energy as the main factor in their rising electricity bills–underlining how national Republicans’ attempts to pin the blame on “green energy policies” are falling flat.
Additionally, given that the public tends to spread the blame across companies and politicians, we recommend tying these two actors together when naming a villain in communications (e.g., “politicians who have been bought off by corporate polluters and utility companies”).
Americans are already inclined to believe that clean energy is cheaper than fossil fuels. Americans are ten points more likely to say that clean energy like solar and wind is cheaper than energy from fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas (38%) than to say the reverse (28%):
- Clean energy is cheaper – 38%
- Fossil fuels are cheaper – 28%
- Both cost the same – 15%
- Don’t know – 20%
By a nearly two-to-one margin, Americans say that expanding solar would lead to more savings than expanding oil and gas drilling. When provided with the following proposals and asked which would lead to the greatest savings in their household energy bills, Americans are far more inclined to choose the expansion of solar:
- Building new solar energy in more places, including home rooftops – 51%
- New oil and gas drilling in more places, including federal lands – 27%
- Neither would make a difference in costs – 22%
Americans expect fossil fuels, but not clean energy, to get more expensive in the coming years. While most Americans believe that natural gas and gasoline will get more expensive over the next ten years, slightly more believe that clean energy sources will fall in price than increase in price:
- Gasoline – 75% will get more expensive / 12% will get less expensive
- Natural gas – 68% more expensive / 12% less expensive
- Solar – 34% more expensive / 37% less expensive
- Wind – 29% more expensive / 34% less expensive
Even among Republicans, majorities believe that gasoline (65%) and natural gas (62%) will rise in price while less than half expect solar (44%) or wind (43%) to get more expensive.
Clear messaging that reinforces the affordability of clean energy moves the needle. Given that Americans are already leaning toward the idea that clean energy is more affordable than fossil fuels, messaging that clearly makes this case is effective.
In a test of seven different narratives to boost support for clean energy, the following message led to the largest increase (+29 points) in the belief that clean energy is cheaper than fossil fuels:
“Energy demand is skyrocketing–and with it, so are energy prices. Americans are struggling with electric bills that get higher and harder to predict every year.
If we want lower bills, we need cheap power. And the single cheapest form of energy available is solar and wind.
Solar and wind provide electricity at prices 30-50% lower than plants powered by oil and gas. Since 2000, solar prices have fallen over 90%. Oil and gas, on the other hand, are still expensive. And they’re easily affected by wars, trade, and tariffs.
We need affordable power. It’s time to tap into the cheapest energy sources we have to bring bills down for everyday people.”
Clean energy advocates should lean into the qualities that Americans associate with “affordable” energy, including that it’s local, unlimited, and proven. In a MaxDiff experiment, Potential Energy presented respondents with different descriptions of energy sources to determine which traits are most strongly associated with an “affordable” energy source.
Based on this test, descriptions that Americans most associate with affordable energy include that it is “available locally,” has an “unlimited supply,” and is based on “long-established technology.”
Descriptions that were relatively less associated with affordability included energy that is “better for the environment,” “can be built almost anywhere,” “can run 24/7,” is “based on the newest generation of technology,” and can be “built very quickly.”
Interestingly, this data indicates that Americans do not associate “new” energy technology with lower costs and, at least when it comes to affordability, trust energy sources with proven track records over those that use the latest technology.
Tying their findings together, Potential Energy recommends messaging that brands clean energy as cheap, unlimited, local, and proven. Pulling from the messaging guidance in their deck:
“Main message: Clean energy is cheap energy. Demand is up. Bills are up. This country needs more energy, now. And clean sources are simply the cheaper, better way to get it.
Pillars:
- Unlimited – Fossil fuels run out, clean energy is infinite.
- Local – Fossil fuels are far away, clean energy is everywhere.
- Proven – Fossil fuels are getting more expensive, clean is 80% cheaper than in 2003.
Call to action: We need affordable power, and more of it. Let’s tap into the cheapest energy sources we have to bring bills down for everyday people.”
Navigator – Voters are much more likely to blame Trump and Republicans for rising electricity costs than Democrats [Website, Deck, Topline]
Voters are much more likely to blame Trump and Republicans for rising electricity costs than Democrats. When asked who they blame more for the fact that electricity costs are going up, voters are twice as likely to choose Trump and Republicans in Congress as they are to choose Democrats in Congress:
- Trump and Republicans in Congress – 38%
- Democrats in Congress – 19%
- Blame both equally – 20%
- Don’t blame either – 12%
Blame for energy prices largely mirrors how voters perceive the broader rise in the cost of living. Voters are more than twice as likely to blame Trump and Republicans in Congress (46%) for the general rise in costs than to blame Democrats in Congress (19%).
The blame game over energy prices is not straightforward. Voters aren’t familiar with the way that electricity prices are set and, as shown in Potential Energy’s data this week, many Americans are inclined to blame utility companies given that these are the entities sending people their electricity bills.
As we saw under Biden, however, rising prices fuel a great deal of anger at the party that holds the presidency and it’s incredibly difficult to redirect blame for the problem away from the White House.
ecoAmerica – Younger Republicans are closer to Democrats in their level of concern about climate change than to older Republicans [Website, Topline]
The majority of Americans are worried about climate change, and concerns span partisan lines. Roughly seven in ten Americans (71%) say that they are at least “somewhat” concerned about climate change, including nearly nine in ten Democrats (89%), more than two-thirds of independents (70%), and the majority of Republicans (55%).
Democrats tend to have much more intense climate concerns than other groups. The majority of Democrats (55%) report being “very” concerned about the problem, compared to around one-third of independents (33%) and 28% of Republicans.
There is a wide age gap in Republicans’ climate concerns. Younger Republicans under the age of 45 (73%) are just as likely to say that they’re at least “somewhat” concerned about climate change as the national average (71%). However, less than half of older Republicans aged 45+ (42%) say that they’re concerned about climate change. This places younger Republicans closer to Democrats (89%) in their overall level of climate concern than to older Republicans.
The sample sizes for Republicans by age group here are not particularly large, so it’s worth cross-checking this kind of subgroup analysis with other data. To that end, other sources do support ecoAmerica’s results in finding wide gaps in climate beliefs between younger and older Republicans. Pew, for example, has aggregated results across multiple surveys to bolster their sample sizes of different age bands of Republicans. They find that younger Republicans–particularly those under the age of 30–are far more likely than older Republicans to recognize that humans are causing climate change and far less likely than older Republicans to support the expansion of fossil fuels.
Related Resources
Environmental Polling Roundup – August 6th, 2021
This post includes a roundup of climate + environment headlines from this week’s public polls, good data points to highlight, and a full roundup including key takeaways from each poll.
Environmental Polling Roundup – August 23rd, 2021
This post includes a roundup of climate + environment headlines from this week’s public polls, good data points to highlight, and a full roundup including key takeaways from each poll.
Environmental Polling Roundup – August 27th, 2021
This post includes a roundup of climate + environment headlines from this week’s public polls, good data points to highlight, and a full roundup including key takeaways from each poll.