Nuclear energy recovers the heart of the French. This is one of the main lessons of the latest Elabe survey carried out for Les Echos, Radio Classique and the Institut Montaigne. According to the results of this study, two out of three French people believe that it is an energy of the future, a percentage that has risen 20 points since 2016.
78% of those surveyed even consider that the atom guarantees France’s energy independence at a time when an important part of the national nuclear park remains idle and must be relaunched by EDF with a view to a winter period that promises to be tense.
Nuclear energy is even more popular among the French, as 62% of them consider it cheap energy, a percentage that rises 5 points compared to last year. In contrast, the proportion of respondents who praise nuclear energy is lower when the criteria taken into account are its safety, its contribution to the fight against climate change (54% for both) or its cleanliness (47%).
The “everything renewable” in sharp decline in public opinion
This improvement in the image of nuclear energy does not harm that of renewable energies. A large majority of those surveyed perceive them as energies of the future (81%), clean (78%), safe (70%), guaranteeing France’s energy independence (64%) and, of course, contributing to the fight against climate change (78%). %). The cost continues to be the only criterion on which energies are fished with the population, since only 42% of the French consider that they are cheap.
The combination of these different arguments leads to a strong increase in the proportion of French people in favor of an energy mix that consists of developing both renewable energy and building new nuclear power plants to replace old ones or renovate existing ones. Now there are 60% who align themselves on the side of this axis of energy policy, while last year they were just over one in two.
Above all, supporters of “all renewables”, who want to develop these energies and gradually phase out nuclear power plants, only represent a large quarter of those surveyed (27%) compared to 37% in 2021. On the other side of the prism , the supporters of “all nuclear”, who want to end the development of renewable energies in favor of the construction of nuclear power plants, constitute only a meager 10% of the sample.
*Study conducted earlier this week with a representative sample of 1,006 adults living in metropolitan France
Source: BFM TV
