Waning Acceptance ….Survey Shows Germans No Longer Willing To Pay Higher Prices For Green Electricity

Germany’s citizens are less willing than ever to accept higher costs for green electricity. Enough is enough, they are now saying.

WDR German public television has a report at its website here on the results of an opinion survey conducted by polling institute Infratest dimap to find out if the public is willing to pay more for green electricity.

54% answered “no”.

That’s 6% more than a year earlier. The results are sobering when one considers how Germans pride themselves as being among the greenest people in the world. Only 41% said they would accept paying more. 3% said they were willing to pay more, but only if the price increase was kept under control.

In 2012 a total of 48% answered “no”.

Not surprisingly the willingness depended on income. 56% of the people with a higher net income said they would accept paying more. However, low income citizens were much less ready to accept higher prices for green electricity: 59% said they were not ready to pay more. What about people earning middle incomes? The ZDF-commissioned survey showed that these people reject green energy even more than the poorer ones: 62% said they would not accept higher prices.

Some years ago, Germans as a whole were convinced that something had to be done to “rescue the climate” and were much more open to paying higher prices for electricity. However the rapid increase in electricity prices over the last years, and hence correspondingly greater pain, has led the public to rethink. Also 5 consecutive unexpectedly harsh winters and the fact that the globe isn’t warming anymore also has had an impact.

As a whole German acceptance of renewable energy is waning rapidly. This also shows that Germans are less alarmed about the threats of climate change.