The many ways of providing decarbonised electricity: Regional differences of preferences in four EU countries

Attitudes of people about decarbonised electricity supply are a crucial factor for the speed at which the energy transition is unfolding as it can both accelerate the deployment of infrastructure through citizen action or decelerate it through opposition. It is only poorly understood which decarbonised electricity supply is preferred by Europeans, let alone how preferences vary across regional contexts. Being a highly interconnected system, contextual variation matters as technical interventions in one region affect other regions, too: If, for example, a wind-rich region decides to stop deploying wind turbines, imports and the potential to balance renewable fluctuations in other regions are affected. Here, we contextualise the results of national choice experiments in four European countries to regions through post-stratification. We build statistical models to determine the association between socio-demographic attributes of respondents and their choices and we then use census data to determine region-specific preferences. Our results will provide a high-level perspective on sub-national variation of preferences about decarbonised electricity supply in Denmark, Germany, Poland, and Portugal. Eventually, these results allow to design future electricity supply on the international, national, and regional level that is in accordance with preferences of people.