Climate change, energy and social preferences on policies: Exploratory evidence for Spain

Spain faces a complex situation regarding its climate change policies. On the one hand, greenhouse gas emissions have shown an important increase since 1990, and are far above the Kyoto commitments. On the other hand, the country is likely to suffer significant impacts from climate change. To date, however, there has been a rather limited application of corrective policies, particularly with regard to energy prices. Indeed, although Spanish citizens are generally very concerned about climate change, price increases in the energy sector have traditionally been opposed. In the present paper, we offer suggestions for future policies, showing that Spanish households, in general, are strongly in favour of the implementation of a green electricity program, which reduces green-house gas emissions, although it makes electricity more expensive for an interim period. Data from a telephone survey representative of the Spanish population which we carried out immediately prior to the Copenhagen climate summit, show that people were willing on average to pay an increase of 29.91€ per month per household over the current electric bill. Our results also show that younger individuals living in the Mediterranean area are more likely to pay for this green electricity program.