Trust: The Currency of Clean Energy
- Anna Bianco
- 1 hour ago
- 10 min read
Brits support the green transition until the energy bill arrives
The Myth of the ‘Green Consensus’
Climate transitions live or die on public trust. Any country's shift to a low-carbon future is shaped as much by public confidence as it is by innovation and technology. The UK was the first major economy to legally commit to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, and its ability to deliver hinges on maintaining broad and sustained public support. Yet support is not guaranteed.
In theory, the UK is united in its environmental stance. Polling consistently shows majority support for climate action. In 2024, around 80% of Brits showed some level of concern about climate change. This creates the illusion of a ‘green consensus’- the idea that environmental progress is a shared, national priority. Policymakers can mistakenly interpret this consensus as durable, widespread support for any measure taken to support a greener future.
In reality, there is a fractured landscape as conversations turn from whether to act to how to do so. People may agree with climate goals in principle, but support is elastic. Depending on a person’s background, the clarity of proposed policies, and their trust in institutions, that support can either stretch or snap.
Brexit Quietly Undermined Britain’s Climate Governance
Besides creating the geopolitical rift that hit headlines and shocked the contemporary Western world order, Brexit quietly dismantled key climate governance frameworks. Historically, EU membership supported UK energy stability by anchoring it to regional frameworks such as market coupling and emissions reduction incentives. The EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) and the North Seas Energy Cooperation platform, for instance, are still effective forms of decarbonization initiatives across EU member states today. After Brexit, the UK forfeited access to these shared mechanisms, inheriting higher costs across the board: reduced investor certainty, more complex bilateral deals, and diminished coordination on cross-border energy flows.
Thus, in the years following the Brexit referendum, green energy politics in the UK have grown increasingly entangled with broader questions of institutional legitimacy and socioeconomics. This analysis will explore how London’s exit from the EU, as a major institutional rupture, impacted the UK's sentiment towards renewable energy policies.
What is the Just Transition?
Energy transitions are not simply technological shifts – they mark major redistributions of resources. Some scholars even contend that "low-carbon transitions [are] contests over power and legitimacy". In this sense, public support for renewables is shaped by how policies are situated within wider social and institutional contexts.
Remarkably, the world’s most economically vulnerable often spend the largest share of their cash on energy in respect to others. Indeed, in Britain, low-income households pay £60 more per year on energy bills than those more well-off.
The goal of the ‘Just Transition’ of energy is “defunding fossil fuels in a way that reduces inequality”. It has been proven time and again–from the Gilets Jaunes protests in France to the opposition to carbon taxes in Australia–that economic hardship dampens support for environmental policy.
Brexit and the Breakdown of Green Energy Support
This analysis draws on the insights from Climate Policy in Unequal Times: Household Economic and Support for Renewable Energy in the UK, a research paper co-authored by myself. The research explores how, in response to Brexit, confidence in the UK government's capacity to deliver a "just transition" eroded, weakening public support for decarbonization in the Sceptered Isle.
Drawing on Household Energy Survey data (2012 to 2020) from the UK government, the paper presents a preliminary study to explore whether an isolated institutional disruption like Brexit had a significant impact on the UK’s low-income support towards renewable energy efforts. The study uses a difference-in-differences approach. This method compares how outcomes (here, public support for renewable energy) change before and after a major event (the Brexit referendum). Brexit is treated as an exogenous event—a major institutional shock that occurred independently of individual households’ attitudes toward renewable energy. In other words, people's views on clean energy were unlikely to have influenced whether Brexit happened, making it a useful event for causal analysis.
Two key findings emerged that are particularly relevant to this discussion: Firstly, low-income households (categorized as the lowest 20% of earners in the UK) exhibit lower support for renewable energy than other income groups in the UK. Secondly, Brexit intensified the negative relationship between low-income households and support for renewable energy policies.
Diving a little deeper, the results suggest that economic vulnerability, not simply values and beliefs, affects public attitudes toward renewable energy policies. Lower-income households are significantly more apprehensive about supporting the green energy revolution than other groups in the UK. And this makes sense. Switching energy sources poses steep upfront costs; as of April 2025, installing a solar panel system for a 3-bedroom house in the UK costs around £9,800.
After Brexit, support dropped even lower, by an average of 0.05 points on a 5-point scale (5 = very supportive, 1 = not supportive), which reflects a measurable shift considering a nationally representative sample of over 200,000 people. Given how the British population’s trust in their institutions plunged post-Brexit, it’s hardly surprising: in times of economic uncertainty and political fragmentation, low-income households are more likely to adopt a cautious stance toward policies that could affect their financial stability.
Where the UK’s Climate Plans Are Falling Short
While Westminster’s climate goals since Brexit remained clear, the reality of delivering a sustainable and ‘just’ energy transition has been far more complicated.
The energy crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine shifted political attention toward short-term affordability. Soaring gas prices across the UK pressured the government to shield households from cost spikes by rolling out emergency subsidies like the Energy Price Guarantee. This guarantee was introduced to cap all UK household energy bills at £2,500 annually. However, because this was a blanket subsidy levied evenly across households, the richest ten percent received nearly twice as much support compared to the poorest tenth. It disproportionately benefited higher-income families who used more energy, doing little to fix the root causes of energy poverty or accelerate renewable uptake in low-income areas over the long term.
To its credit, Westminster has been running a range of climate incentives long before the crisis. The Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme, introduced in 2014, was designed to stabilize renewable investment by offering developers a guaranteed “strike price” for the electricity they generate. If market prices fall below this strike price, the government tops up the difference; if prices rise above it, developers pay back the surplus. This model initially helped drive down the cost of offshore wind by creating predictable revenue streams and attracting private investment. However, with an increasingly uncertain and evolving geopolitical landscape, this scheme does not pack the same punch. In September 2023, the UK government’s CfD Allocation Round 5 failed to secure a single offshore wind project. These disappointing results put the UK’s 50GW offshore wind target by 2030 in jeopardy.
The Planning and Infrastructure Bill, introduced in 2024, seeks to prioritize energy projects through a 'first ready, first connected' model. Projects that are finished with paperwork and ready to build first get connected to the energy grid first, incentivizing fast-moving deployment. However, in practice, it risks favoring large, heavily-backed developers who have significantly more legal and financial resources to fast-track approvals. A 2024 report by the Green Alliance warned that community energy projects could be "crowded out" by this system, as many smaller initiatives lack the upfront capital to immediately meet the permitting requirements that the Bill requires.
Finally, Westminster announced the National Wealth Fund in 2023, which aims to invest £7.3 billion in public funds toward clean energy, manufacturing, and green technology. However, without dedicated streams for household-level decarbonization, the fund risks reinforcing energy inequities in the UK rather than closing them. Yes, the NWF would likely boost national GDP, but without changing the level of energy resilience for low-income populations.
On paper, Westminster has its climate strategies lined up. But without materially improving outcomes for vulnerable communities, these efforts are no more than fairy dust. A credibility gap is created that deepens public skepticism and pushes British households further away from supporting the green transition.
Inclusion Is the Real Infrastructure
What policies can Westminster adopt to foster a more inclusive energy transition?
Firstly, Targeted Subsidies, focused specifically on lower-income households, aim at helping them afford energy costs and transition to greener energy sources. London already has in place its 15-year-old Warm Home Discount Scheme, which gives eligible households a one-time £150 discount on their electricity bill each winter. This is not even close to sufficient. First, it is a one-time rebate, which helps with short-term fiscal constraints, but the root causes of high costs and energy consumption are overlooked. Instead, Westminster should follow existing initiatives from its neighbors and allies. California’s Low-Income Weatherization Program (LIWP), for instance, upgrades low-income households’ energy systems with solar (PV) energy for free. The program aims to bypass the one-time fixed cost switching energy systems, which is usually the major economic hurdle holding back vulnerable households.
Another critical tool in the policymakers' toolkit is Retrofit and Resilience Programs. ‘Retrofitting’ means upgrading existing buildings with new energy technology to improve efficiency, thereby reducing GHG emissions. These programs can be implemented at any level, nationwide or locally. London should look across the Atlantic to New York City’s Retrofit Accelerator. The Accelerator is a city-funded initiative that offers free energy advisory services to local building owners, particularly targeting affordable housing. By advising on energy efficiency strategies, the Accelerator plays the dual role of preserving low utility costs and achieving lower levels of GHG emissions. To improve resilience against future weather events and price shocks, buildings often receive support to shift to renewable energy sources. PWC UK contends that retrofit activity has the potential to create almost 600,000 net new jobs across the UK through to 2035, and can cut household energy bills by as much as 20 to 30 percent.
Targeted subsidies and retrofit programs are two examples of ways to mitigate the strong negative relationship found in the paper. By alleviating the financial risks associated with
switching energy sources, such interventions can help calibrate low-income households' support for renewable energy to levels more in line with the broader UK population. However, one often overlooked dimension of energy inequality is the informational and behavioral barriers to efficiency.
Lower-income households typically have less time and fewer resources to engage with the long-term benefits of decarbonization. Many also simply lack access to spaces where energy issues are discussed. These gaps reinforce skepticism toward the green transition, and in turn contribute to the low renewable energy policy support observed in the study.
To ensure a truly ‘ just’ transition, the UK should not overlook the importance of clear, accessible information availability and trust-building. Not only will these instruments reduce information asymmetry in the British population, but will also uplift the voices of the most affected income group of the green revolution.
Perhaps the strongest existing program is Germany's Caritas Stromspar-Check, which works to “overcome the lack of awareness and lack of information barriers”. It offers free, face-to-face energy advising and audits to low-income households. The audits are conducted by previously unemployed people who have since been trained in the energy sector. This approach carries multiple benefits: it creates green jobs, disseminates energy literacy, and, crucially, builds trust. Since the advisors shared similar lived positions, they can better relate to and understand the needs of each household they serve. This builds grassroots support by heightening trust and inclusion– the foundation of ‘just’ and sustainable climate policy.
Britain’s Energy Future Depends on Trust
We know now that the technology to decarbonize exists. The challenge is whether British leadership and public trust can align and keep up the pace.
If ordinary citizens—especially those already marginalized by economic inequality—do not see tangible, fair benefits from climate policy, the political consensus underpinning the net-zero transition could quickly unravel. Plus, Brexit exposed the vulnerabilities in Britain’s institutional trust, and the uneven rollout of green policies since then has magnified them. Policymakers must stop assuming that concern about climate change automatically translates into lasting support for every green initiative.
Building a lasting and ‘just’ transition means embedding equity into every stage of climate planning: from targeted economic policies to accessible information campaigns. A bright climate future is created not by passive mandates, but through dynamic partnerships with the communities it affects.
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