Public Agenda


Voters aren’t the only ones frustrated by the swirl of misinformation surrounding energy; so are those in the industry who find themselves in a constant battle against the sound bite and the stereotype.

Rayola Dougher, senior economic advisor for the American Petroleum Institute, says it irks her that a lot of voters assume that anyone in the petroleum industry is anti-renewable. Keep reading →


Large swaths of voters don’t know that oil is a fossil fuel and can’t tell the difference between a solar panel and a skylight.

But just setting them straight about the facts isn’t enough to produce an electorate that will arrive at the ballot box with a clear grasp of energy issues. If it were, the vast amount of information circulated about energy would sink in, and we’d all be experts. Keep reading →


Funny thing about Americans. We’ve got strong opinions about what’s wrong with energy, especially when gasoline prices rise, but our passion tends to exceed our understanding.
Polling indicates we hold strong sentiments about energy independence and renewables. Yet key details elude us.

More than half of Americans cannot name one type of renewable energy and nearly 40 percent can’t identify a fossil fuel, according to New York-based research organization Public Agenda. Many wrongly think the US gets most of its oil from the Middle East, and few realize that it will be years before green energy makes up a large portion of our resource mix. Keep reading →