Columbus – Ohio’s Republican voters and conservative independents are greener than state politicians might have believed.
They strongly support green energy and want to see more of it in Ohio, a new poll of only Republican and conservative independents has determined.
The poll also found:
“The vast majority of voters in this conservative portion of the ideological spectrum say they would tell GOP candidates to back these kinds of policies. They think of renewable energy as a job creator, and place these sources of energy squarely in the mix of more traditional energy sources,” she wrote.
“They even go so far as to be willing to pay more in higher electricity prices if renewable energy cost more.”
The Ohio Conservative Energy Forum, a group led by Mike Hartley, former Kasich administration director of public liaison, sponsored the poll. Hartley will take part in a City Club of Cleveland luncheon panel discussion today on conservatives embracing renewable energy policies.
Hartley said the poll’s results clearly show that conservative voters want their candidates to support renewable energy policies and are more likely to vote for those who do. He said his group plans to talk to lawmakers and policy makers about the poll’s findings.
“Elected officials understand polling numbers,” he said. “Numbers don’t lie.”
He added that the poll did not strongly focus on the question of whether the state ought to return to traditional regulation, a topic the utilities have been talking to lawmakers about.
The survey did include a question about wind farms and state rules determining now close a wind turbine can be to other properties. GOP lawmakers slipped a new setback rule into a budget bill in 2014 that has effectively stopped all major wind development in the state. The poll found that 72 percent would support “more reasonable set-back limits for wind turbines.”
The poll also measured how voters feel about different kinds of power generation, including coal, nuclear and gas as well as wind and solar. It found that voters favor natural gas power plants and energy efficiency efforts, that solar is more popular than coal, wind or nuclear power.
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