Survey Finds Public Broadly Supports Biden’s Wind Energy Goals

WASHINGTON — A recent survey shows that large swaths of the public support President Joe Biden’s offshore wind and renewable agenda, but they nevertheless continue to knock him on job performance.

The survey of 2,038 adults in U.S. coastal counties was conducted late last year by Climate Nexus, a strategic communications services company that seeks to drive the debate on a range of climate, energy and water issues.

Generally speaking, respondents to the survey approved of the end results of Biden’s actions on the clean energy front, but appear not to give him credit.

A case in point is in the area of offshore wind farm leases.

Since the start of the Biden-Harris administration, the Interior Department has approved the nation’s first six commercial-scale offshore wind energy projects, sold a number of leases to developers of offshore wind projects and has plans to sell at least four more sizable leases.

A solid 59% of respondents said they strongly or somewhat support the sale of new leases, and 65% said they support the administration’s goal of building enough offshore wind farms to power 10 million homes by 2030.

And yet, when it comes to whether they approve or disapprove of the way Biden is handling his job as president, 54% said they disapprove of his job performance.

At least some of that disconnect appeared tied to anxiety over whether the nation is fully ready to make a complete transition to clean energy.

While 57% said the United States should eventually stop using oil, coal and natural gas, they also agreed they have reservations about how quickly the country is moving in that direction.

The remaining 43% said the United States should never stop using oil, coal or natural gas.

That said, offshore wind was viewed very favorably by 27% of respondents and somewhat favorably by another 39%.

And a total 53% said they approve of the construction of more offshore wind farms, while only 22% said they’d rather see an expansion of offshore drilling for oil and gas.

A majority of respondents also gave high marks to offshore wind development in terms of it being good for job creation and the economy (55%) and energy independence (61%).

The survey, the full results of which can be found here, had a margin of error of +/- 2.3%.

Dan can be reached at [email protected] and @DanMcCue