ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE USE OF RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES – THE CASE OF SLOVENIA

• Authors: Bevk Tadej , Kurdija Slavko
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

A shift towards renewable energy sources (RES) is needed to reduce humanity’s carbon footprint. The measures for increasing RES are developed on multiple levels, from international policies to concrete developments of projects. The aim was to compare the results of surveys on public attitudes towards ET and RES, particularly on the social acceptance of RES at different levels of consideration and in different measurement contexts. Triangulation of three data sources on different levels was made: The European Social Survey (ESS), measuring the general attitudes from a cross-country perspective; a national RES survey regarding the possible national RES scenarios - ranging from general attitudes to opinions about project development, and a qualitative in-situ survey of attitudes towards existing solar power plants as the most specific level. The results from ESS show a discrepancy between accepting the existence of climate change on the one hand and responsibility on the other. National survey on attitudes towards RES shows growing public acceptance of wind and solar power plants but lower acceptance of hydropower across different scales of the survey. The qualitative in-situ study revealed solar power plants as highly noticeable objects in the landscape, and that individuals often weigh the negative and positive impacts without clearly deciding which one prevails. The results across all three surveys indicate high public agreement with the climate change paradigm across the scales but reticence toward tangible environmental measures, especially as the survey context moves from general and abstract towards local and specific. The results indicate a strong material conditionality in forming public attitudes towards energy policy and weak environment empowerment, further fuelled by low institutional trust in Slovenia. Looking at Slovenia's positioning in the European environmental value framework that Slovenia is at a crossroads between European countries with high levels of acknowledgement of the existence of climate change and countries with a pattern of weaker acceptance of the climate paradigm and more concrete decarbonisation measures.

Keywords

EN

CLIMATE CHANGE; RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES; EUROPEAN SOCIAL SURVEY; SOLAR POWER PLANTS; SLOVENIA

• Publisher: Slovak Academy of Sciences, Institute of Social Sciences
• Journal: Človek a spoločnosť. Internetový časopis pre pôvodné teoretické a výskumné štúdie z oblasti spoločenských vied
• Year: 2024
• Volume: 27
• Issue: 2
• Pages: -

Contributors

author

Bevk Tadej

• Department of Landscape Architecture, Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

• https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1189-812X

author

Kurdija Slavko

• https://orcid.org/0009-0007-6251-2123

Identifiers

DOI

doi.org/10.31577/cas.2024.02.632