Official Statistics

DESNZ Public Attitudes Tracker: Headline findings, Winter 2025, UK

Published 12 March 2026

The DESNZ Public Attitudes Tracker (PAT) is a nationally representative annual survey of adults (aged 16+) in the UK that tracks public awareness, attitudes and behaviours relating to the policies of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), such as energy and climate change.

This report provides a summary of the headline findings from the Winter 2025 wave of the Tracker, which ran from 4 November to 9 December 2025.

The Winter 2025 wave is the fifteenth wave in a series of surveys which began in Autumn 2021. Between Autumn 2021 and Summer 2023, surveys were conducted every quarter, although there was no data collection in Autumn 2023. From Spring 2024, the survey moved to a triannual design with waves conducted every Spring, Summer and Winter.

Two summary self-reported measures are used in this report:

• ‘Awareness’ encompasses all respondents who said they had heard of a particular concept or technology, including those who said they know: ‘hardly anything but I’ve heard of this’, ‘a little’, ‘a fair amount’ or ‘a lot’.
• ‘Knowledge’ encompasses those who said that they know ‘a fair amount’ or ‘a lot’ about a topic.

Headline findings for Winter 2025

Net zero and climate change

• 9 in 10 were aware of the 2050 Net Zero target (90%), this has remained broadly stable since Winter 2021.
• Almost 8 in 10 said they were concerned about climate change (77%). Overall concern has declined slightly from 79% since Summer 2025, and from 85% since Autumn 2021.
• Nearly 7 in 10 said that they supported government action to reduce climate change in the UK (68%), with 45% saying they supported this strongly. Overall, 12% said they opposed such action.
• People felt that most responsibility for climate change action should lie with businesses and industry (35%) and the government (31%), while 16% felt that responsibility lay with the general public.
• Almost 4 in 10 agreed that the UK is a global leader in tackling climate change (39%), while 2 in 10 disagreed (20%). These were both unchanged from Winter 2024.
• When asked how important it is that the UK is a global leader in tackling climate change, 65% said that it was important, down slightly from 69% in Winter 2024.

Renewable energy

• Almost 8 in 10 supported the use of renewable energy like wind, solar and biomass (78%), with no statistically significant change since Summer 2025. Overall support has declined from 87% at the start of the time series in Autumn 2021. Opposition remained stable at 5%.
• Awareness of Great British Energy (GBE) and Clean Power 2030 was 57% and 83%, respectively (unchanged from Summer 2025).

Energy infrastructure and energy security

• 44% supported using nuclear energy to generate electricity in the UK in Winter 2025, unchanged since Winter 2024. However, over the longer term this has increased from 37% in Winter 2021. 11% opposed the use of nuclear energy in Winter 2025, down from 14% in Winter 2024.
• 75% of people said they were aware of the need to build more electricity network infrastructure, down from 81% in Summer 2025 but in line with Winter 2024 (75%).
• People were asked what information they would find most useful to know about during the planning stage of new electricity network infrastructure in their local area. Information rated as most important included: the impact on electricity bills (48%), the impact on local plant and animal life (40%) and the visual impact on the landscape (40%).

Heat and energy use in the home

• When asked about specific low carbon heating systems, people were most aware of air source heat pumps (77%, up from 71% in Winter 2021) and ground source heat pumps (72%, up from 67% in Winter 2021).
• There was lower awareness for other low carbon heating systems including biomass boilers (63%), heat networks (52%), hybrid heat pumps (52%), hydrogen boilers (44%), and hydrogen ready boilers (35%).
• 22% of owner occupiers were likely to install or already have an air source heat pump, compared to 12% for ground source heat pumps, 14% for hybrid heat pumps and 10% for biomass boilers.
• 41% said they were unlikely to install an air source heat pump, slightly up from 38% in Winter 2024.
• A substantial minority said they did not know enough to decide if they would install a low carbon heating system (between 30% and 38% for each system).
• Among owner-occupiers who said they were unlikely to install a low carbon heating system, the main barriers were the cost of installation (51%), a perception that it wouldn’t be viable in their home (36%) and concerns about the possible running costs (35%).
• Note: it is worth interpreting these findings in the context of other data, e.g. Boiler Upgrade Scheme statistics.

Energy bills and tariffs

• Almost all people said they paid at least some attention to the amount of heat they used (96%). The main reason for paying attention was to minimise money spent on heat (70%).
• Most people (91%) said they had heard of ‘time of use’ electricity tariffs, while knowledge (knowing a fair amount or a lot) of these tariffs was at 41% (no changes since Winter 2024).
• 11% said they were already on a ‘time of use’ tariff (up from 9% in Winter 2024) and around half said they were likely to switch to this type of tariff (51%). The proportion not likely to switch decreased from 28% in Winter 2024 to 24% in Winter 2025.
• The main barriers to switching to a ‘time of use’ electricity tariff included not wanting to think about when to use electricity (37%), followed by 36% saying it was not suitable to use energy off-peak (36%), and 35% saying they were happy with their current tariff or provider (35%).

Notes

The survey is run by Verian on behalf of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

The PAT is a household self-completion survey that uses a ‘push to web’ methodology. Respondents can choose to complete the survey online or use a paper questionnaire.

In this publication, differences between groups are only reported where they are statistically significant at the 95% confidence interval level.

For further information about the technical details of the survey please refer to the Technical overview.