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Public attitudes to wind energy

It's more popular than you might have been told!

Numerous opinion polls into peoples' attitudes to wind energy have been carried out over the last twelve years since the first commercial wind farm came online, and each reaches the same conclusion - people are generally in favour of wind energy in the UK. There has never been any other result from surveys into wind energy, no matter where or when they were carried out.

In fact, wind energy is one of the most popular of the energy technologies. Certainly if you were to ask people which form of power generation they would like to see more of, the answer is least likely to be nuclear, oil, coal or gas. More than eight out of tenpeople are in favour of wind energy and less than one in ten against it. However, this 5% often have the most to say and certainly say it the loudest, which often creates the impression that wind farms are very unpopular.

Equally, many people believe that wind farms are noisy nuisances which disturb the lives of locals living in the area. On the contrary, people who live near a wind farm and have direct experience of it generating electricity tend to be more positive than those who do not. Indeed, recent studies has shown that the closer people live to a wind farm the more supportive they are of both the project and wind power as an energy source.

Click here on recent surveys
of public attitudes to
wind energy in the UK

Read on for more information about wind energy surveys:

Word of mouth

Read through our collection of quotes from wind farm visitor books and people who live nearby.
Find out what they have to say!