{"id":8471,"date":"2012-04-10T14:13:02","date_gmt":"2012-04-10T19:13:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=8471"},"modified":"2012-04-12T09:10:09","modified_gmt":"2012-04-12T14:10:09","slug":"poll-consumers-favor-domestic-energy-production-natural-gas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/04\/10\/poll-consumers-favor-domestic-energy-production-natural-gas\/","title":{"rendered":"Poll: Consumers Favor Domestic Energy Production, Natural Gas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Americans will likely take their views on energy issues to the voting booth this November, according to a new national poll by The University of Texas at Austin<\/a>. The survey found that 65 percent of respondents considered energy to be an important presidential issue.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Courtesy of the University of Texas at Austin Energy Poll, March 12<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The results suggest that overall, consumers favor policies that would increase domestic energy production.\u00a0Fifty percent of respondents said they would likely vote for a presidential candidate who approved construction of the\u00a0Keystone XL Pipeline<\/a>, and\u00a046 percent said that they would support a candidate willing to expand offshore oil drilling along the Gulf Coast<\/a>. But only twenty percent of participants said that they would likely vote for a\u00a0presidential candidate\u00a0<\/a>who supported eliminating the\u00a0Environmental Protection Agency\u00a0<\/a>(EPA).<\/p>\n

Natural gas<\/a> and renewable energy<\/a> appear to have a strong base of support among potential voters:\u00a061 percent of poll participants said they would be more likely to vote for a presidential candidate who expanded natural gas development, while 59 percent stated they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supported additional financial incentives for renewable technology companies.<\/p>\n

The results offer a glimpse into how Americans think about environmental and energy issues more broadly.\u00a0Sixty-five percent of participants said global climate change<\/a> is happening, while 22 percent say it’s not. Of those who believe climate change is taking place, 70 percent\u00a0blame deforestation and 65 percent\u00a0cite fossil fuels as the most significant contributing factors.<\/p>\n

Thirty percent said that they are willing to pay much higher prices to protect the environment, an 8 percent drop from a similar energy poll conducted last fall. Fifty percent of respondents said that they would not describe themselves as environmentalists, while 37 percent called themselves “passive” environmentalists. A small slice of those questioned – just 8 percent – characterized themselves as “active” environmentalists.<\/p>\n

Participants were also asked to share their thoughts on safety concerns linked with hydraulic fracturing<\/a>, or “fracking,” the\u00a0drilling process used to get to hard-to-reach natural gas and oil. Thirty-eight percent of respondents favored more regulation of the fracking industry, while 14 percent believed the industry as it stands today<\/a> is over-regulated.\u00a0Twenty-two percent believe existing regulations are sufficient but require better enforcement, while\u00a062 percent of respondents admitted they were either unfamiliar with or had never heard of hydraulic fracturing.<\/p>\n

The polling group – which was developed by the\u00a0McCombs School of Business\u2019 Energy Management and Innovation Center<\/a>\u00a0at the University of Texas at Austin –\u00a0<\/em>consulted 2,371 individuals from March 5-16, 2012. The group weighted its data using U.S. Census Bureau figures, as well as propensity scores, to ensure the sample\u2019s composition reflected the actual U.S. population.<\/p>\n

You can visit www.utenergypoll.utexas.edu<\/a> to watch a\u00a0webcast of a presentation of poll findings and charts of the results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Americans will likely take their views on energy issues to the voting booth this November, according to a new national poll by The University of Texas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":8476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[58],"tags":[96,15,122,69,73,22,30,144,21,145],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8471"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8498,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8471\/revisions\/8498"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}