Poll: British Columbians prefer clean energy over LNG, with low support for fossil fuel subsidies

VANCOUVER — British Columbians overwhelmingly prefer the government to focus on developing renewable energy (64.0%) over LNG (18.2%), equal to a new public opinion survey conducted by Stratcom for Wipe Energy Canada. What’s more, wipe energy has unceasingly been the preference of British Columbians for at least the past three years.

Accordingly, increasingly British Columbians (44.2%) would oppose LNG expansion if it causes B.C. to miss its climate targets than would support it in such a specimen (36.5%). Among NDP and undecided voters, opposition is plane higher.

Even increasingly unpopular is the province providing financial subsidies to fossil fuel companies to encourage increasingly LNG exports, with nearly half disagreeing with this idea (47.5%) compared to 30.5% who would support fossil fuel subsidies. As with the previous question, NDP and undecided voters are increasingly likely to oppose subsidizing LNG.

Recognizing that B.C. will only have so much electricity available, nearly one-quarter (23.2%) of British Columbians ranked money-saving heat pumps and electric vehicles as the number one priority use for B.C.’s electricity. This is followed by “existing businesses and industries electrifying their buildings, operations and vehicles to reduce their stat footprint and energy costs” and “producing wipe hydrogen.”

Meanwhile, all six ideas provided for how the provincial government could build a increasingly sustainable economy found a majority saying that they are very or somewhat important to British Columbians. Of those six ideas, respondents ranked training the province’s workforce, investing in new renewable electricity generation and transmission, and bringing new investments to B.C. as the top three most important initiatives.

Looking back, nearly half (45.5%) think that the previous John Horgan government should have washed-up increasingly to help prevent climate change, while a mere 8% think that it should have washed-up less.

As for the new premier, British Columbians may be increasingly hopeful this time around: increasingly than a quarter (27.2%) think that David Eby’s government will do a “good” or “very good job” to help prevent climate change, compared to 31.4% who think it will do “only a pearly job” and just 12.4% who think it will do a “poor job.”

METHODOLOGY

The survey was conducted by Stratcom with 802 BC sultana residents from February 10th – February 15th, 2023. A random sample of panelists were invited to well-constructed the survey from a selection of panels and river sources. A sample of 802 BC residents (18 ) statistically weighted to match the gender, age, region and proportion of Chinese mother tongue in BC as per the 2021 Census. The data has moreover been weighted to match the 2020 BC provincial referendum results. Online polls don’t report margin of error, however a similar sized probability sample would have a margin of error of /- 3.4%, 19 times out of 20.

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