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IBM Study Finds Consumers Willing to Pay Extra for Clean Energy
According to a new survey conducted by IBM earlier this year, the majority of energy consumers in six industrialized nations expressed willingness to pay extra for environmentally friendly energy, despite the fact that energy costs are already high costs for conventional energy.
In a survey of individuals from Australia, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States, 67 percent said they'd pay as much as 20 percent more for energy from sources with a lesser effect on the environment. At the same time, only a quarter of respondents are purchasing renewable energy options available to them, which the report's authors attribute to poor outreach and education about options.
Along those lines, individuals' awareness of their own environmental impact is minimal: three-quarters of respondents outside the U.S. had not assessed their own environmental footprint, and 85 percent of U.S. residents had not done so.
Another obstacle may be that individuals don't believe their personal behavior will have an impact: although 30 percent of respondents believe their personal energy use will increase in the next five years, 57 percent said they expect their energy bills to increase regardless of overall energy