From Climate Crisis to Energy Crisis: Foster Public Support for Renewable Energy Transition Through Framing

Under the long-standing backdrop of the climate crisis, would communication about acute energy crises encourage the public’s support for policies facilitating the adoption of renewable energy technologies? Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we conducted a survey experiment in the United Kingdom (N = 2,760) in early 2024 to test the effects of three messages (energy affordability, energy independence, climate change vs. control) aimed to encourage support for renewable adoption policies. We find that across all respondents, the climate-change and energy-affordability messages increase policy support, while the effect of the energy-independence message is nonsignificant. The energy independence message increased policy support among the political center-right but not among the political left; it also increased policy support among those not concerned about climate change, but not among the climate-concerned. Contrary to expectations, the energy affordability message increased policy support among moderate-to-high-income respondents but not low-income respondents.