On Wednesday, four senators who run the two committees that matter on energy (Republicans Shelley Moore Capito and Mike Lee, Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse and Martin Heinrich) introduced a 417-page bipartisan permitting bill. It's the furthest permitting reform has gotten in years, and Capito wants it to be the first vote when the Senate comes back after the midterms.
A few weeks earlier, my firm fielded the third wave of the Centerline Tracker for Centerline Liberties and the CRES Forum, and a big chunk of it was about exactly this: what voters want built, how fast, and on what terms. I don't usually build a newsletter around my own work. But the timing lined up, and the rest of the public polling on this lines up with it too. So this week it's one poll, with backup.
Five to One
Only 14% call it the wrong direction. That includes 68% of Republicans. Our survey of 800 registered voters, fielded August 31 to September 3, found solar at 79% favorable and wind at 74%, with majorities of Republicans, independents and Democrats favoring both. Natural gas isn't far behind at 71%.
That last number matters. Voters don't want to swap one source for another. Asked how to approach the mix, 42% say use every source we have, 41% say lean harder into wind and solar, and only 16% want to pull back from renewables. The center of gravity is all-of-the-above with a clear tilt toward renewables.
The reason is personal. 70% of voters say their energy costs went up over the past year, 32% say "a lot," and just 4% say their bills went down. When the bill keeps climbing, more supply from more sources looks like the obvious fix.
Other polls tell the same story. Colorado College's Conservation in the West survey found 73% of Mountain West voters want renewables to be the top priority for meeting the country's energy needs, a record for that series, and 51% of Republicans now prefer renewables over more drilling. AP-NORC and the University of Chicago's EPIC find about six in ten Republicans support renewable energy incentives. On this question, Republican voters are a lot closer to everyone else than the Washington debate suggests.
Build It, But Build It Right
Permitting is what the Senate bill is about, and here a 40% plurality of voters want it to be easier to permit and build energy projects. 35% want no change, and 24% want it harder. And 67% say the review of a major project should wrap up in two years or less, which is far faster than federal reviews often take.
The support for speed comes with conditions, though. When we framed the choice as speed versus a careful, thorough review, most voters sided with the review. They want projects built efficiently and they want the safeguards kept.
An oil-and-gas industry poll got the same answer. GS Strategy Group, polling for the American Exploration & Production Council, found 60% want permitting easier, against 21% harder. That held almost evenly from very liberal voters (56%) to MAGA Republicans (63%). It's one of the few energy questions where liberals and MAGA voters land in the same place.
The limit shows up just as clearly. In the Mountain West, 70% oppose fast-tracking oil, gas and mining projects by reducing environmental reviews. And when the 2035 Initiative at UC Santa Barbara scored policies on a 100-point scale, "cutting permitting red tape" (59) trailed "building more clean energy to lower bills" (67). People back faster permitting because they want the things it gets built. The process itself doesn't excite anyone.
Voters want energy built faster, but they don't want anyone cutting corners to get there.
— Alex Lundry, Due Data
So how does the deal measure up? On paper, it tracks the public pretty well. It sets new agency decision deadlines, narrows the window to sue over a permit to 150 days, and protects permits once they're issued, including new remedies when an agency treats one class of energy project differently from another. That last provision reads like a response to the stop-and-start treatment wind and solar permits have gotten over the past year. Heinrich and Capito both went out of their way to say the bill keeps environmental and tribal protections intact. Whether it actually does is a fight for the lame duck. On the politics, they picked the right pitch: speed with the safeguards still in place.
Poll Vault tracks every energy and climate poll we can find — see them all →
Whatever You Do, Don't Say "Data Center"
The best way to lose support for faster permitting is to link it to data centers. When we tied the same permitting question to rising demand from data centers, opposition to easier permitting jumped 11 points.
Voters don't like data centers. 60% oppose one being built in their area. 64% don't believe tech companies when they promise a data center won't raise local electricity bills. And 62% say local residents should decide whether one gets built — not local officials, and not the companies.
The rest of the field agrees, and opposition is still climbing. SSRS found local opposition jumped from 49% to 61% in four months, including 54% of Republicans. Global Strategy Group has 65% saying the U.S. should halt or slow data center construction. And in Fox News polling, being told a data center could raise household bills made 53% less likely to support one.
Grist reported last month that senators are steering clear of the data center framing for this very reason, and the bill reflects it. It requires data centers to cover the transmission costs they create rather than passing them on to other ratepayers. Making data centers pay is the most popular idea in this whole debate. Americans for Responsible Innovation and Morning Consult found 78% support making data centers pay for their own grid upgrades, with only 13% opposed. In Virginia, VCU found it at 81%. In Montana, Public Policy Polling found 92% want rules protecting electricity rates from data centers.
Voters will accept a data center, but they want two things settled first: who decides, and who pays. The bill takes a real step on who pays. The rest of the work on who decides will happen town by town.
Price-Tested
We gave half our sample a stress test: imagine each energy source added about 5% to your monthly bill. Support dropped for everything, which you'd expect. But it didn't drop evenly. Solar and wind stayed the most popular sources in the country even with the price attached. Natural gas took a much bigger hit, and coal fell to net negative.
I want to be honest about the limits of that finding, because other polls complicate it. PPIC found 60% of Californians won't pay more for renewable electricity, even though 62% back the state's 100% clean power law. In Heatmap and Embold's 5,000-voter study, 57% say advocates exaggerate how cheap renewables have become. Voters like clean energy. They don't fully believe it saves them money.
The better argument may be momentum. When we asked voters what share of U.S. electricity comes from wind and solar today, the average guess was about 27%. The real number is roughly 17%. And the voters who think renewables are already a big part of the mix are the most supportive of expanding them (+59 net) while those who lowball it are the least (+33). The 2035 Initiative found that correcting people's cost misconceptions moved support by less than two points. Talking about where clean energy is headed is likely to work better than arguing over what it costs.
Solar Is the Good Neighbor
We asked voters which of five facilities they'd most accept within a mile of their home. Solar won easily: 47% picked a solar farm, 21% wind turbines, 16% a data center, 9% a gas plant and 7% a nuclear plant.
British voters feel the same way. More in Common found Reform UK voters, whose party campaigns against solar farms, would take a local solar farm over fracking 43% to 23%. In Virginia, Embold found 71% support putting solar on schools and government buildings.
Solar has a real advantage, but it doesn't win every fight automatically. Projects still get approved one community at a time, and solar starts each of those fights with the most goodwill.
Quick Hits
⚡ Renewables win votes. 58% of our respondents are more likely to back a federal candidate who strongly supports renewable energy. Along the coast, Tarrance Group polling for Turn Forward found Republican voters went from net negative to 45–29 more likely to back a pro–offshore wind candidate over 14 months.
🔌 Reliability first in Texas. Texas 2036 and Baselice found 81% of Texans rank grid reliability as a top-two energy priority and 73% rank lower bills there. Reducing emissions came in at 31%. Making the case for more supply is easier on reliability grounds than climate grounds.
🧾 Clean energy isn't taking the blame. In Massachusetts, MassINC found only 9% blame state clean energy programs for high energy prices. 32% blame President Trump and 28% blame the utilities.
🤖 AI worries keep growing. In our own tracker, the share worried about AI misuse or harm hit 84%, up 8 points from our summer wave. That's the backdrop for every data center fight on the calendar.
What to Watch
- The lame-duck vote. Capito wants the permitting bill first in line when the Senate returns. Watch whether the environmental-review language survives, since that's the part voters care about most.
- "Regular order" for wind and solar. Democrats want clarity on how the administration will treat renewable permits. The permit-protection provisions are where that gets settled.
- Data center cost allocation. Making data centers pay for their own transmission is the most popular piece of this bill. Expect governors and utility commissions to copy it whatever happens in the Senate.
It's rare for a big bipartisan bill and public opinion to point the same way. On permitting, right now, they mostly do. Voters have already settled on building more, building cleaner, and giving communities a say. The Senate is catching up.
What Else We Tracked
- Three in Four Wisconsin Voters Say Data Center Costs Outweigh Benefits — Marquette Law School Poll
- Nine in Ten Voters Back Grid Modernization and Utility Price-Gouging Crackdown — LCV and Climate Power / Hart Research
- Energy Infrastructure to Lower Costs Tops Voter Priority List at 88% — Washington Examiner / Tyson Group
- Framing Clean Energy Around Jobs and Costs Boosts Working-Class Climate Support by 17 Points — Verasight
- Most Voters — Including Republicans — Back Corporate Climate Action as Smart Business — maslansky + partners
- Colorado Voters Reject Data Centers Over Water, Power, and Electricity Cost Fears — Magellan Strategies
- Texas Voters Back Data Center Moratorium 44-27%, With Bipartisan Support — ReconMR
- Maryland Voters Back Nuclear and Natural Gas to Ease Rising Utility Costs — Blended Public Affairs / Zenith Research
Until next time,
Alex Lundry
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