The Majority of Voters Want to See Climate Action

Climate initiatives aren’t just a priority for Democrats.

Fifty-three percent of registered voters say global warming should be a high or very high priority for the president and Congress, according to a survey from The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. In addition, 66% of registered voters say developing clean energy sources should be a high or very high priority for the president and Congress.

Some of the findings in the survey are relevant to the real estate community. 

Eighty-eight percent of respondents support providing tax incentives or rebates to homeowners, landlords and businesses to make existing buildings more energy-efficient. A vast majority of respondents, 86%, support setting stronger energy efficiency standards for new buildings.

Eighty-three percent support setting stronger energy efficiency standards for appliances, which could affect residential owners and developers. A large percentage of respondents, 80%, support providing tax incentives or rebates to homeowners, landlords and businesses to purchase appliances—such as electric water heaters, electric heat pumps and electric induction cooktops—that can be powered without burning fossil fuels.

The apartment owners and developers who are installing electric vehicle charging stations may be on to something. Sixty-seven percent support installing 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations across the US by 2030.

Meanwhile, other studies highlight the growing costs of climate change. Stanford researchers recently reported that intensifying precipitation contributed one-third of the financial costs of flooding in the United States over the past three decades. In all, intensifying precipitation led to almost $75 billion of the estimated $199 billion in flood damages from 1988 to 2017. 

Climate Change Leads Charge for ESG Investment 

This growing willingness to tackle combat changes comes amid the mainstreaming of environmental, social and governance investment. 

ESG is now accepted by managers and investors alike, according to Preqin. More significantly, it finds that most investors and fund managers believe ESG policies have a positive impact on returns, with 83% of fund managers expecting ESG to be more important by 2025.

“Driven by regulations and investor demand, ESG investing has gone from being a niche market to the mainstream and has reached critical mass as of late 2020,” says Dave Lowery, Preqin head of research insights. “Industry professionals already see the relationship between positive impact and investment performance.” 

Climate change will be leading the charge in ESG investing, according to MSCI’s Linda-Eling Lee, speaking to CNBC. 

“Despite all the lockdowns that we’ve had this year, we’re still on track for a world that is going to be too warm to sustain life as we know it, according to climate science,” Lee told the publication. “You’re going to see lots more investors really shifting capital towards less carbon-intensive assets.”