Public opinion is not the only factor policy makers must weigh when charting a course for the US energy sector, but it does play a role. And this can prove difficult when there is a mismatch between what the public favors and how well people understand the costs and challenges of implementing their preferred energy strategies.

In the US, the government is heavily dependent on private industry when it comes to understanding how energy systems function, and how they are evolving.

“The energy system in the United States is largely in the hands of the private sector,” said Shirley Neff, Senior Advisor to the Energy Information Administration, at the USAEE/IAEE North American Conference in Anchorage, Alaska last week. “We don’t have a national oil company or utility in the United States. We really do rely on that interaction.”

And industry must secure a “social license to operate“, an issue that has come up frequently of late in debates over the safety of deepwater drilling, hydraulic fracturing, and construction of new pipelines, such as Keystone XL. Policymakers must balance the interests of both sides.

Public opinion is not the only factor that informs energy policy, according to Mike Canes, Distinguished Fellow at the Logistics Management Institute and a former USAEE president. Other sources of information include academia, non-governmental organizations, and industry itself.

But public opinion is taken into account, and sussing out what the public actually wants is a challenging task. Energy questions posed by national polls, such as those conducted by Gallup or Pew, do shed some light on the public’s views on energy, but questions are not always clear, and responses can vary widely depending on the phrasing of the question.

In one national poll on the most important issues to Americans, energy ranked #4 out of 7, behind the economy, education, and health care, but ahead of gasoline prices, which came in at #5. What is surprising is not that energy ranks where it does, but that energy and gasoline are considered separate issues. Also surprising all poll results suggesting that Americans favor natural gas despite a preference for renewables over fossil fuels, seeming to see it as belonging to its own separate category.

For more on the American public’s disconnect between gasoline and other forms of energy, see A Simple Fix for the US Electricity Sector.

As online energy information resources have become more widely available, “people are a lot better informed about the technologies”, but “one of the things people still do not understand are energy markets, and what it takes to bring technologies to the market”, said Neff.

What the Polls Say

The results of national polls suggest a broad disconnect between theoretical public goods and the cost of those goods. When cost information is provided in the question itself, respondents are sometimes less likely to favor energy solutions, such as renewables, that they might otherwise support.

“In the abstract, the public likes efficiency, likes renewables,” while “coal and nuclear power [are] not heavily favored”, Canes said. But when provided with information on the potential for additional costs associated with certain fuels, their answers changed.

A large share of poll respondents favor government spending on research and development of wind, solar and fuel cells, Canes said. “When you put a price on it…I remember asking how much more are you for renewable energy?” said Branko Terzic, Executive Director of the Deloitte Center for Energy Solutions. “Anything above 5% [more], the dropoff was dramatic… 10% was impossible.”

But respondents seemed to hold natural gas in a category all its own, divorcing it from the broader fossil fuel category in terms of level of support. Polls indicate that the public likes the idea of renewables more than it does fossil fuels, but natural gas is “actually quite favored”, Canes said.

When it came to gasoline or carbon taxes, respondents appeared put off by costs unless they had a clear idea of how proceeds would be spent.

A poll by San Jose State University posed a series of questions regarding a 10 cent per gallon increase on the federal gasoline tax. Responses indicated a low level of support for an increase. But “if you start talking about how these monies could be spent, you get different responses to it,” Canes said. “To reduce pollution and global warming? Almost half the public said that wouldn’t be so bad.”

“If you make it a little more specific, let’s use the monies to reduce accidents on the roads, improve safety, you get a majority that say they would support that,” Canes said.

Similarly, for a carbon tax – which elicited little support on its own – a poll by Yale and George Mason Universities asked whether respondents would support it if used to pay down the national debt. “By two to one, they said yeah, that sounds like a good idea,” Canes said. However, that ratio changed when respondents were asked whether they would support it even if it resulted in another $180 per year in expenditures by the average US household.

“You can see how the number turns,” Caines said.