Sustainable education: altering the opinions on renewable energy sources

¹ Department of Trade and Finance, Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamýcká 129, Prague 6, Prague, 165 00 Czech Republic
² Laboratory of Scientometrics, Ural State University of Economics, 8 Marta Str., 62/45, 620144 Yekaterinburg, Russian Federation
³ Centre for Energy Studies, Prague Business School, Werichova str. 1145/29, 15200 Prague, Czech Republic
⁴ Centre for Energy Studies, Cambridge Institute for Advanced Studies, CB1 1AH, King str. 23, Cambridge, United Kingdom
⁵ Togliatti State University, Belorusskaya str. 14, 445020 Togliatti, Russian Federation

^* Corresponding author: cabelkova@pef.czu.cz

Abstract

Our paper studies the link between the education and the people’s opinions and views of the renewable energy sources (RES). We employ the representative data (1026 respondents) from the Czech Republic. Our empirical model did not reveal any associations between the subjective opinion on the respondents about the possibility to replace electricity generation from conventional sources (such as coal-fired or gas-fired power plants, nuclear power plants or large hydroelectric power plants) with the electricity from wind, solar radiation and biomass combustion. In addition, there seemed to be no correlation between the usage of renewable energy in the Czech Republic and the education of the respondents. However, there are strong significant association between the level of education of the respondents and the existence of opinions on the RES. Higher education means higher probability of the existence of such an opinion. Almost one third of the respondents with primary education did not have an opinion on the topic. This might be caused by an increasing interest in RES of people with higher level of education as they are likely to be more open to all discussions on the socially relevant issues in general. The lack of association between which opinion people have and their level of education is likely to indicate the marginal role of explaining the importance of RES in education.