Britons are more confident that universities can come up with solutions to the climate crisis than governments, a new poll has shown.
More than half of British people believe that governments will come up with innovations to help reduce the effects of climate change, a new Cambridge University poll has found.
The poll found that almost two-thirds of people (61%) expect universities to lead the drive for innovations, compared to 47% who believe governments will do so.
Almost the same amount (46%) believe the private sector will be instrumental in coming up with new technologies and innovations to reduce climate change.
The poll of 2,003 people was conducted by Public First in September this year.
What tech does the public believe will stop climate change?
The research found that the public believes that carbon capture technology which removes carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere is the most important (38%) followed by alternative fuels for cars (37%) and grid-scale batteries that store large amounts of renewable energy (30%).
Carbon capture
Carbon capture technologies capture emissions from burning fuels for energy or from industrial processes such as cement production, and uses or transports them for storage permanently underground – for example, in disused oil fields under the sea.
It is seen by the likes of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the UK's Climate Change Committee as a key element in meeting targets to cut the greenhouse gases driving dangerous climate change.
While it has long been championed as part of the solution – with energy secretary Ed Miliband first announcing plans to develop carbon capture projects for power plants in 2009 during the last Labour government – little progress has been made on it in the UK.
On 4 October, the UK government pledged nearly £22bn funding to develop “carbon capture clusters” in Merseyside and Teesside over the next 25 years. The move was welcomed by independent advisers from the Climate Change Committee, but Greenpeace criticised the support for hydrogen from gas as putting the country at risk of “locking ourselves into second-rate solutions”.
