83 percent of African-Americans support growing wind power

Update: After posting this, we’ve seen some additional coverage about this poll. To learn more about the context, see “Poll Shows African Americans Support Clean Power Plan and Climate Action, But Not Exxon-Funded National Black Chamber of Commerce.”

Two-thirds of African-Americans strongly believe a shift to clean energy will create jobs and reduce energy costs, according to a new poll released by Green for All and the Natural Resources Defense Council. An even greater majority, 83 percent, support the increased use of wind energy specifically. These findings, based on interviews with 800 randomly selected African-Americans nationwide from Sept. 20-27, underscore the broad popularity of clean energy, including wind power, as a source of jobs, consumer electricity bill savings, and as powerful tool for carbon pollution abatement.

Wind energy has widespread, bipartisan support across America for good reason. Wind can save consumers billions of dollars and is one of the biggest, fastest, and cheapest ways for states to comply with the EPA’s Clean Power Plan (also supported by an overwhelming majority of African-Americans, according to the poll). About those jobs? Wind energy supports 73,000 of them in the U.S., including well-paying manufacturing jobs at over 500 factories in 43 states. With the support of performance-based policies like the renewable energy production tax credit, American wind energy can continue to innovate and bring costs down further, keeping this success story going.

Key energy-related findings from the poll include:

African Americans strongly believe a shift to clean energy will be good for jobs and their energy bills:

• 66 percent of African Americans say using more renewable energy will translate into new jobs, while only 11 percent expect job losses.
• More than half, 57 percent, believe that shifting to cleaner energy will reduce their energy costs, and only 18 percent believe it will increase their electricity bills.

African Americans overwhelmingly favor using more renewable energy than getting power from coal or nuclear:

• 83 support using more wind energy, and 87 support more solar power.
• 42 percent favor getting more power from coal and 36 support more nuclear energy.

African Americans overwhelmingly embrace the Clean Power Plan and states developing state-based clean energy plans to implement it:

• 83 percent support the Clean Power Plan, with 63 percent in strong support. Just 9 percent oppose the plan.
• 82 percent back states developing clean energy plans that help cut carbon pollution, improve energy efficiency and boosting renewable energy.

Click here to read questions and responses from the poll.