Environmental Choices Report 3.d – Green energy companies and micro-CHP

This report describes the public’s usage and awareness of ‘green energy’ companies such as Bullfrog Power and Ballard. It also considers the reaction of ‘home owners on mains gas supply’ towards a description of a micro-CHP boiler (based on the Ceres Power prototype), in terms of appeal and intention-to-install. The analysis specifically focuses on how the results vary according to a respondent’s personal concern about climate change.

This is one of 14 reports from the Environmental Choices study conducted in Canada, England and the US. The original research was conducted in late 2008, and the reports have had a major upgrade for the '2013 edition' – complete with new analyses, easier navigation, better distribution through books and via iPAD, and new pricing.

With Environmental Choices, our general goal has been about understanding how much ‘concern about climate change’ makes a difference to people in the choices they make and the policies they would support. We can see from this research that there are great divisions in the public’s attitudes towards climate change; from the most concerned ‘Climate Citizens’, to the moderately concerned ‘Mild Greens’, to the dismissive and/or unconcerned ‘Sceptics & Uninvolved’. Throughout the reports we examine how these different viewpoints correlate with, and predict other attitudes, interests and behaviours. By creating this robust, international categorical variable to describe ‘climate change concern’ we have a way of measuring the consumer value of low-carbon products, across multiple product categories.