Introduction:

Climate change is increasingly recognised as a potential threat by policy makers and scientists (IPCC, 2001). To address this problem, policy makers are attempting to promote the efficient use of energy and the development of renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and biomass that do not emit greenhouse gases in the process of energy or electricity generation. Taking a comparative perspective upon energy consumed in Europe, currently the actual amount of energy consumed in Western European countries, per capita, in comparison to those in Eastern Europe, is far higher. For example, per capita total primary energy supply in the UK is 3.89 tonnes whereas it is only 1.62 tonnes in Romania (International Energy Agency, 2000).

This statistic is mirrored in carbon emissions per capita across different countries, with highest levels in the US (20.57 tonnes of C02) and Western European countries such as Germany (10.14 tonnes) and far lower levels in countries such as Slovakia (7.01 tonnes) and Romania (3.85 tonnes) (IEA, 2000). The ‘energy mix’, which is the proportion of energy generated from different fuels, varies across each European country. The major (that is greater than 70%) source of primary energy used in Europe is fossil-fuel sources such as crude oil, natural gas and coal. What tends to vary is the proportion of energy generated from nuclear or renewable sources.

We can distinguish between the European countries that use nuclear energy to generate electricity (e.g. France, UK, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania) and those that to not (e.g. Austria, Greece, Portugal, Ireland). Finally, the use of renewable energy varies largely as a function of indigenous resources existing within each country (e.g. hydropower in Sweden and forestry biomass in Austria). The use of renewables such as solar and tidal energy is limited in most European countries, although wind energy has been more vigorously developed in countries such as Denmark, Spain and the Netherlands.

Whilst the bulk of available scientific efforts have been targeted at technical and economic aspects of energy (Lutzenhiser, 1993), a growing body of literature has emerged that focuses upon public perceptions of, and attitudes towards, various energy sources. In terms of renewables, research studies have most commonly focused upon public attitudes to wind energy (e.g. Thayer and Hansen, 1988; Marie-Simon, 1996; Wolsink, 2000), as wind turbine technology has been more cost-effective than other forms of renewables and, as a consequence, wind energy has been most frequently perceived as a public interest issue (Walker, 1995). It should be noted that the great majority of these studies have been conducted in richer, industrialised North American and Western European countries such as the US, UK, Denmark and the Netherlands. Alongside this body of work, yet relatively disconnected from it from a scientific point of view, are literatures, often stemming from the 1980s and early 1990s, focusing upon public attitudes to energy conservation (e.g. Darley and Beninger, 1981; Hedges, 1991) and nuclear energy sources (e.g. Van der Plight, 1991).

In reviewing the available scientific body of work concerning public perceptions of, and attitudes towards, renewable energy, several weaknesses are discernible. Firstly, there is a lack of research attention paid to attitudes towards more than one energy source within a single research study, which has minimised the potential for comparative analysis across diverse energy sources such as fossil-fuels, renewables and nuclear energy. As a result, whilst the literature is able to produce a quite detailed picture about the nature of public attitudes towards renewables generally, and wind energy specifically, in the richer, industrialised countries, comparatively few systematic efforts to conduct comparative three analyses have taken place.

As a consequence, it is difficult to estimate how public attitudes differ between energy sources. Yet, this issue is of utility for energy policy makers at regional, national and international levels who increasingly face difficult choices between the pros and cons of producing energy and electricity generated from nuclear, fossil-fuels (e.g. oil, coal and gas) and renewable sources. Existing studies that have addressed attitudes to more than one energy source have tended to be market-research type studies (e.g. Greenpeace, 1991; RSPB, 2001), which have posed specific single questions to respondents indicating their preference for one or another type of energy generation, most typically nuclear energy versus renewable energy development.

For example, in 1999 a Euro Barometer Opinion Poll was conducted in the 15 EU member states accessing 16,082 respondents (INRA–ECOSA, 2000). This study probed whether respondents felt that progress in new technologies, including both ‘solar energy’ and ‘nuclear energy’, would affect quality of life ‘over the next twenty years'. Responses on 8 different forms of technology were scored on a scale of 3 (will improve quality of life), 2 (will remain the same) and 1 (will deteriorate). The results are summarised in the table below.