Russia's war against the Ukraine has fundamentally changed the German debate on the energy transition: Energy supply is now also a "question of national security" and renewable energies are considered "freedom energies". Under the pressure of dependence on fossil energies from Russia, the energy transition is currently given the highest political priority and the German government wants to massively accelerate the expansion of renewable energies. According to a recent survey conducted by the Ilmenau University of Technology in April 2022, a clear majority of the population (58%) supports an accelerated energy transition. Around one fifth has not yet formed an opinion on this. The proportion of opponents of such a reorientation is rather small at 23%. Does this now pave the way for a fundamental realignment of the energy system?
For a realistic assessment, it is important to look at the attitudes of the population toward the energy transition outside the current crisis situation, because the energy transition is not a new topic. Even in the run-up to the federal elections in September 2021, the transformation of the energy system was a central campaign issue. However, at that time, the energy transition was mainly discussed in the context of climate change and not against the backdrop of rising fossil energy prices and endangered security of supply.
According to a survey of 2025 citizens aged between 14 and 65 conducted by the Technical University of Ilmenau in August 2021, the implementation of the energy transition was already supported by 74 percent it this time. 15 percent rejected it; another 11 percent were still undecided.
However, if we look at the support for various measures that are essential for the success of the energy transition, we see a mixed picture: the greatest support is for the construction of photovoltaic systems on roofs and facades in cities (69%) and the construction of offshore wind power plants at the sea (56%). On the other hand, the construction of wind power plants near one's own home (43%) or the expansion and construction of power lines through the region in which one lives (37%) meets with considerably less acceptance. Likewise, regarding the use of hydrogen as an energy source people were still hesitant: barely more than half of the people (52%) were of the opinion that green hydrogen should be increasingly used for energy supply in Germany.
But it is not only individual measures that are controversial, the image of the energy transition as a whole was anything but positive: the respondents experience it primarily as expensive and slow, as well as chaotic and far from the citizens. Moreover, most are rather pessimistic and worried when they think about the implementation of the energy transition.
The work of the former CDU/CSU-led coalition on the energy transition was also evaluated correspondingly negatively: Almost three quarters of the citizens considered the federal government to be overburdened with the energy transition. Two thirds of those surveyed complained that they were not adequately involved in its implementation. Just 24 percent felt that their fears and concerns regarding the energy transition were taken seriously. "The new federal government has the chance to do a lot better here," say the Ilmenau researchers, "but this will not be easy, because trust in the political actors is generally low on this issue. No matter in which level, less than a quarter of citizens trust that politicians will implement the energy transition consistently and successfully."
All in all, the findings of this study, which were recently published in an open access publication https://doi.org/10.22032/dbt.51678 , make it clear that although the population is generally positive about the energy transition, it is rather critical of many measures and their implementation. According to the Ilmenau researchers, the results show that the current support of the energy transition during wartime is no guarantee that the upcoming transformation processes will run smoothly. "It is to be expected that resistance will soon form and that great communicative efforts will be required to secure the necessary support among the population in the long term. The media play a special role in this context. They not only inform about the upcoming changes, but they also contribute to whether the population supports or rejects them," say the Ilmenau scientists.
Other results show that there is still something to do: although a clear majority of citizens believe that reporting on the energy transition is trustworthy (62%) and correct (61%) and only a relatively small proportion is annoyed by it (35%) or no longer wants to hear or see it (31%). On the other hand, the verdict on information intensity is predominantly negative. Almost two thirds of the respondents were of the opinion that the media report too little on the various aspects of the energy transition.
The data was collected by the Department of Empirical Media Research and Political Communication at the Ilmenau University of Technology as part of the project "Wissenschaftskommunikation Energiewende" funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.