Perceptions of GHG emissions and renewable energy sources in Europe, Australia and the USA

People’s sentiments and perceptions of greenhouse gas emission and renewable energy are important information to understand their reaction to the planned mitigation policy. Therefore, this research analyzes people’s perceptions of greenhouse gas emissions and their preferences for renewable energy r...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental science and pollution research international 2022-01, Vol.29 (4), p.5971-5987
Main Authors: Zhang, Yaming, Abbas, Majed, Iqbal, Wasim
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alternative energy sources
Aquatic Pollution
Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution
Biomass
Biomass energy
Biomass energy production
Data mining
Earth and Environmental Science
Ecotoxicology
Emissions
Energy policy
Energy resources
Energy sources
Energy transition
Environment
Environmental Chemistry
Environmental Health
Environmental policy
Environmental science
Europe
Geothermal energy
Greenhouse Gases
Humans
Network analysis
Renewable Energy
Renewable energy sources
Renewable resources
Research Article
Search engines
Sentiment Analysis
Social networks
Solar energy
Waste Water Technology
Water Management
Water Pollution Control
Wind
Wind power
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Summary:People’s sentiments and perceptions of greenhouse gas emission and renewable energy are important information to understand their reaction to the planned mitigation policy. Therefore, this research analyzes people’s perceptions of greenhouse gas emissions and their preferences for renewable energy resources using a sample of Twitter data. We first identify themes of discussion using semantic text similarity and network analysis. Next, we measure people’s interest in renewable energy resources based on the mentioned rate in Twitter and search interest in Google trends. Then, we measure people’s sentiment toward these resources and compare the interest with sentiments to identify opportunities for policy improvement. The results indicate a minor influence of governmental assemblies on Twitter discourses compared to a very high influence of two renewable energy providers amounts to more than 40% of the tweeting activities related to renewable energy. The search interest analysis shows a slight shift in people’s interest in favor of renewable energy. The interest in geothermal energy is decreasing while interest in biomass energy is increasing. The sentiment analysis shows that biomass energy has the highest positive sentiments while solar and wind energy have higher interest. Solar and wind energy are found to be the two most promising sources for the future energy transition. Our study implies that governments should practice a higher influence on promoting awareness of the environment and converging between people’s interests and feasible energy solutions. We also advocate Twitter as a source for collecting real-time data about social preferences for environmental policy input.
ISSN:0944-1344
1614-7499
DOI:10.1007/s11356-021-15935-7