Environmental Polling Roundup – September 23rd, 2022
HEADLINES
- WE ACT 4 Change + Data for Progress – Voters overwhelmingly prefer for community input to be prioritized over industry input in reforming the permitting process; the clear majority also want to strengthen NEPA through the Environmental Justice for All Act (Release, Topline)
- Navigator – Support for the Inflation Reduction Act is stable, and voters continue to rank climate change among the top priorities for Biden and Congress; three in five attribute climate change to human activity (Release, Deck, Topline)
- Consumer Reports + EVNoire + GreenLatinos + Union of Concerned Scientists – Charging concerns rank as a greater barrier to interest in electric vehicles than costs (Release, Report)
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Environmental advocates can strengthen their argument on permitting reform by framing it as an issue of communities vs. corporate interests. New polling by WE ACT 4 Change and Data for Progress finds that voters overwhelmingly believe that input from impacted communities should be prioritized over input from industry association groups as Congress considers changes to the permitting process for energy projects. This is consistent with past polling on the topic, as a 2020 poll from the Center for American Progress found that preserving local communities’ rights and protecting public health were the two strongest arguments against rollbacks to NEPA.
- There has been no measurable backlash against the Inflation Reduction Act, as voters continue to prioritize legislative action on climate change. Navigator finds that majority support for the Inflation Reduction Act has held steady in recent months and, importantly, there remains a strong public appetite for more federal action on climate. In fact, after inflation and the economy, climate change and the environment rank on par with or higher than any other issue priority for the national electorate.
- Electric vehicle advocates should educate the public about the growth in charging infrastructure, as concerns about charging continue to be the largest barrier to interest. A new report on electric vehicle attitudes released by Consumer Reports, in conjunction with EVNoire, GreenLatinos, and the Union for Concerned Scientists, finds that concerns about charging outrank concerns about costs as barriers to interest in electric vehicles. This finding holds true across racial and ethnic groups, signifying needs to improve charging infrastructure and better communicate about these improvements in communities of all kinds.
GOOD DATA POINTS TO HIGHLIGHT
- [Permitting + Justice] Voters support the Environmental Justice for All Act by a greater than three-to-one margin (69% support / 20% oppose) after reading a brief description of it [WE ACT 4 Change + Data for Progress]
- [Permitting] By a 65%-22% margin, voters prefer that lawmakers prioritize feedback from impacted communities over industry association groups like the American Petroleum Institute when considering changes to the permitting process [WE ACT 4 Change + Data for Progress]
- [IRA] Voters support the Inflation Reduction Act by a greater than two-to-one margin (64% support / 26% oppose) after reading a one-sentence description of the bill and its major provisions [Navigator]
- [Climate Change] 60% of Americans agree that climate change is mostly a result of human activity [Navigator]
- [Permitting + Clean Energy] By a 56%-35% margin, voters say that President Biden should prioritize permitting for clean energy projects over fossil fuel projects [WE ACT 4 Change + Data for Progress]
- [Permitting] Just 16% of voters believe that permitting reform should be attached to the annual government spending bill, compared to 59% who say it should be considered as a standalone bill and 10% who say it shouldn’t be considered at all [WE ACT 4 Change + Data for Progress]
- [Issue Priority] More Americans say that climate change and the environment is the single “most important issue” to them than any other issue besides inflation / prices and jobs / the economy [The Economist/YouGov]
FULL ROUNDUP
WE ACT 4 Change + Data for Progress
Voters overwhelmingly prefer for community input to be prioritized over industry input in reforming the permitting process; the clear majority also want to strengthen NEPA through the Environmental Justice for All Act (Release, Topline)
This is the first substantive public polling we’ve seen about Senator Manchin’s permitting reform plan. Consistent with previous polling on permitting issues, the poll shows that voters prioritize community input in the federal permitting process.
A 2020 poll about the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), released by the Center for American Progress, found that two arguments against proposed rollbacks to NEPA ranked above all others in their persuasiveness. These top-testing messages against weakening NEPA were that the rollbacks would a.) endanger public health by removing important clean air protections and that b.) the rollbacks would strip Americans of the right to have a say on major development projects in their own backyards.
This new poll from WE ACT 4 Change and Data for Progress similarly finds that framing the permitting reform debate as an issue between communities and corporate interests puts environmental advocates on stronger footing: nearly two-thirds (65%) say that Congress should prioritize feedback from communities impacted by new projects when considering changes to the permitting process, while just 22% say that lawmakers should prioritize feedback from industry association groups like the American Petroleum Institute.
This framing also importantly puts voters of all political affiliations on the same side: Democrats (71-point margin) and independents (47-point margin) both say that communities’ input should be prioritized over industry groups’ input by wide margins, while Republicans say that community input should be prioritized over industry groups’ input by an 11-point margin.
The poll additionally finds that, by a 21-point margin, voters would prefer for President Biden to prioritize permitting for clean energy projects like wind and solar farms (56%) over permitting for fossil fuel projects like gas plants and pipelines (35%).
While these data points are encouraging, advocates should be clear-eyed about the challenges they face in arguing against permitting reform. The idea of unleashing more domestic energy production with an “all-of-the-above” approach has a lot of currency with the public, and polls this year have shown that voters are amenable to new domestic fossil fuel projects in the interest of lowering energy costs and increasing U.S. energy independence.
Streamlining new energy projects is therefore an intuitively appealing idea, which makes it all the more important for environmental advocates to clearly explain the negative consequences of shortcutting the process (namely, losing community input and endangering public health by removing protections for clean air and water).
The WE ACT 4 Change / Data for Progress poll also finds that there is broad, bipartisan support for the Environmental Justice for All Act. After learning that the bill “proposes new protections and strengthens existing laws to protect low-income communities and communities of color from pollution,” voters support it by a 49-point margin (69% support / 20% oppose). This support extends across the electorate, with majorities of Democrats (89%), independents (68%), and Republicans (54%) all in favor of the proposed legislation.
Navigator
Support for the Inflation Reduction Act is stable, and voters continue to rank climate change among the top priorities for Biden and Congress; three in five attribute climate change to human activity (Release, Deck, Topline)
Navigator, like other public pollsters, continues to find that there is steady majority support for the Inflation Reduction Act when people know what’s in it.
The latest Navigator poll finds that voters support the bill by a 38-point margin (64% support / 26% oppose) after reading this brief description: “As you may know, Biden and Democrats’ new legislation that has been passed by Congress is called the Inflation Reduction Act, which will give Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices, bring down health insurance premiums, and invest in clean energy like wind and solar power.”
In four polls since early August, Navigator has consistently found margins of support for the bill hovering around 40 points (38% to 43%) and overall support hovering around two-thirds (64% to 67%).
These strong and stable numbers show that the substance of the legislation is enduringly popular, though there’s still plenty of room to educate the public about the bill’s substance: the latest Navigator poll also finds that four in ten voters (40%) say they have heard either “not much” or “not at all” about the Inflation Reduction Act.
Another notable finding in the poll is that, in the wake of the Inflation Reduction Act’s passage, climate change and the environment continue to rank as top issue priorities for the electorate overall and as nearly unparalleled priorities for Democratic voters.
When asked to select the top four issues that President Biden and Congress should be focusing on, inflation (55%) and jobs and the economy (43%) are the only two issue categories that voters are considerably more likely to prioritize than climate change and the environment (25%). The poll finds that climate change and the environment are essentially level with several other issue priorities, such as Social Security and Medicare (25%), health care (24%), immigration (23%), and abortion (22%) as the electorate’s next-biggest concerns after the economy and inflation.
Among Democratic voters, meanwhile, inflation (43%) is the only issue priority cited more often than climate change and the environment (37%).
The Navigator poll also backs up other public polling showing that the majority of Americans recognize that humans are causing climate change. The poll finds that three in five voters (60%) agree it’s true that “climate change is a result of human activity, not because of natural patterns in the environment.”
Consumer Reports + EVNoire + GreenLatinos + Union of Concerned Scientists
Charging concerns are the most common barrier to interest in electric vehicles across groups (Release, Report)
This new report analyzes interest and attitudes surrounding electric vehicles across racial and ethnic groups in the United States.
While some survey findings hold true across groups – for example, that there is significant interest in electric vehicles and that concerns about the feasibility of charging them are the most common barrier to interest – the survey also finds some notable differences across demographic groups in how they think about the costs of owning an electric vehicle and their priorities for charging infrastructure.
The report finds that people of color, for example, are relatively more likely than white consumers to cite maintenance and repair costs as a barrier to electric vehicle interest. The report also finds that people of color are more likely than white consumers to cite concerns about personal safety at public charging stations.
Pulling from the report’s summary page, with emphasis added in bold:
“Overall interest in EVs is high
- Across all racial demographics, overall interest in purchasing EVs was high, with communities of color showing at least as great a level of interest in purchasing an electric vehicle as white consumers: 33 percent of white, 38 percent of Black, 43 percent of Latino, and 52 percent of Asian Americans say they would “definitely” or “seriously consider” purchasing or leasing an EV as their next vehicle.
- For those individuals who identified charging as an issue limiting adoption, availability of publicly accessible charging remains a greater concern than convenience or long charging times.
- In terms of perceived cost barriers, more Black and Latino individuals identify maintenance and repair costs as a consideration holding them back from purchasing or leasing an EV (54 percent of Black and 48 percent of Hispanic respondents, compared with 37 percent of white respondents), while more white and Asian Americans for whom cost is an issue identify purchase price as the primary concern (60 and 66 percent, respectively, compared with 55 percent of Latino and 46 percent of Black respondents).
Experience with EVs can help alleviate those concerns
- For all groups, experience with EVs strongly correlated to interest in purchasing or leasing an EV. However, since experience is contingent upon access to electric vehicles, community education and outreach may be needed to circumvent the current disparities observed in Black and Latino communities.
Conclusions and policy recommendations
- Charging at home is the most affordable way to charge EVs today but is not an equally viable option for all communities, particularly where there may be a higher proportion of renters and/or multi-family dwellings. Support for additional charging alternatives is necessary.
- Increasing affordable, accessible, reliable public EV charging infrastructure situated in safe locations would address all of the groups’ biggest concerns about EV charging.
- Improving access to financing and incentives for both new and used EVs is a critical policy needed to accelerate EV adoption. Increasing access to EVs provides a clear way to educate communities on the experience of driving an EV, giving consumers an opportunity to understand how an EV fits into their own, local context.
- Education and engagement initiatives aimed at Black and Latino consumers, targeting their specific needs and concerns, are crucial to address gaps and mitigate systemic barriers to adoption.”
In analyzing barriers to interest, the report additionally states that “[a]mong all groups, where, when, and how frequently to charge an EV is the greatest concern, followed by cost.”
While it may seem counterintuitive that charging would outrank costs as an obstacle to EV adoption, especially with inflation and the cost of living continuing to rate as Americans’ top issue concerns, previous polls have shown that questions about charging weigh roughly equally with costs as factors for consumers in considering electric vehicles.
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.