The current administration seems strongly in favor of doing something to stem the tide of climate change. Why is nothing happening?

Actually, something is happening, but many of the government’s actions so far have merely righted reversals from the brief Republican administration.

For example, the administration has resurrected a requirement of the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act that had been axed by the former guy, requiring that climate impacts be analyzed and local communities have input before federal agencies approve mines, road expansions and other major projects.

Early in this presidential term, the United States rejoined the Paris Accord. The participation of the world’s superpower and beacon of capitalism is crucial to the cooperation of smaller nations.

But government sometimes works against its own interests. President Joseph Biden pledged to eliminate carbon emissions from the electric industry by 2035. Meanwhile, the largest federal utility, TVA, is betting on natural gas to replace retiring coal-fired power plants, locking in greenhouse gas emissions for generations to come.

Legislation is the long-term way to mitigate damaging climate change in the U.S. On this Earth Day, President Biden is on our region talking up solar energy and offshore wind farms authorized last year as part of a trillion-dollar-plus infrastructure package. But meaningful climate legislation is nearly impossible in Congress, where Republicans blockade any effort to protect Americans from the devastating and unequal effects of global warming.

Legislation won’t get any easier if Democrats don’t hold onto Congress in 2022, as President Barack Obama learned.

That leaves rulemaking as the expeditious path. Regulations have been restored on the release of mercury, a neurotoxin linked to developmental damage in children, from coal-burning power plants.

On the regulatory front, President Biden is rolling back recent damage to tailpipe emissions rulemaking by restoring California’s authority to set its own rules on vehicle emissions. This is important for the nation, not just California, which is a leader in fighting climate change. Seventeen other states and D.C. have adopted California’s cleaner standards.

And then there’s the economy. The president who promised to stop drilling on public lands is in favor of more drilling on public lands, now that a major war and related sanctions are disrupting supply and driving up the cost of oil, which in turn drive high inflation. Extracting more petroleum won’t make any difference in oil prices for years, as new wells are developed.

The only consolation is that the world’s most profitable industry will pay more for the right to return fossilized carbon to the atmosphere.

It’s been a fun 16 years. I’ve stopped writing about the category, and instead help individual companies communicate the value of their sustainable cleantech innovations through energy marketing communications.

I’ll be listing these fantastic domains for sale so someone else can benefit from them.

Two energy milestones

This week the world reached a symbolic landmark. The price of oil dropped below zero for the first time ever. One benchmark’s negative price, attributed to a slump in demand during the Covid-19 pandemic , lasted just one day.

But it was a shot heard round the world. From this momentous occasion let’s take a look back, then forward.

You started a what?

In 2004, “blogging” was a new term and it was taking off. I had run a website for 10 years that was a blog, just not called a blog. This should be familiar turf, I thought.

What the blogosphere and media landscape lacked was coverage of sustainable energy for business readers. I felt that several outlets would fill that gap within a few years and I wanted to be among them. I had nothing to lose by going first.

But the early examples of blogging per se were snarky political rants that left me not wanting to be part of it. Could I turn Energy Priorities into a magazine?

There weren’t many examples of online magazines then, but fringe outlets had spent millions to establish the category. Slate was owned by Microsoft, and David Talbot’s Salon had reached its peak of paying – yes, paying! – subscribers. Huffington Post and many others would soon follow.

So I started writing, and by 2006 I was also trying out another new medium, podcasts.

We still talk a lot about energy

As an International Business student in the seventies I learned about climate change in, of all places, Foreign Policy magazine.

Today, every media outlet covers sustainable energy and climate change. Fortune’s 50th Earth Day cover is “A Planet in Crisis,” with a feature essay by 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben.

Denis Hayes and Greta Thunberg have stepped in to fill the vacuum left by Al Gore.

National Geographic’s April 2020 edition has two halves with two covers – one optimistic and one pessimistic – about the world on the 100th Earth Day.

So, how well have we done in the past 50 Earth Days?

Renewable energy equipment prices dropped, which enabled large-scale projects across the United States. Solar costs came down 99% since 1975. Technologies improved rapidly, too. For what my wife and I paid for solar panels at our off-grid cabin in 2001, we can get four times as many kW in 2020.

But renewables still produce a tiny fraction of the electricity and heat needed to get America off fossil fuels – which will have to happen if we want to mitigate the worst physical and social effects of climate change.

Americans created the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the E.P.A. All three are proving brittle at the hands of conservative politicians and appointees bent on destroying them.

The Paris Climate Accord came – and went. Unanimous ratification was a most exciting moment for the environmental community. Modest as the accord was, it was too much for some countries, especially ours, to bear. Paris still has a pulse.

The Clean Power Plan looked like a path to decarbonizing our centralized electric generation system. But it’s being crushed under the heel of an administration that is beyond apathetic.

Public opinion is under attack

A loud minority of Americans are similarly hostile toward environmental regulations. What was once a conservative cause, then a bipartisan issue, has somehow become politicized like everything else.

We can thank the Koch brothers, fossil fuel companies and big political donors for funding long, Merchants of Doubt-style disinformation campaigns to influence American opinion.

But it hasn’t worked.

While the dinosaur industries say we can’t stop climate change, young Americans say, “hold my beer.”

According to Pew Research, a majority of young adults 18 to 38 think the U.S. government is doing too little about climate change.

78% of millennials and 61% of Gen X say the more important priority for our energy supply should be developing alternative energy, not expanding fossil fuels. And that’s among young Republicans. For Democrats overall, the figure is 90%.

What are your energy priorities?

Through Energy Priorities Magazine I published content that was widely shared and syndicated. I collaborated with high-profile publications on energy and sustainability reporting. Podcasts I produced were aired on NPR and available to millions more online. I barely made a dent. But it was a dent, and I was not alone.

The next step is yours. Read about energy and climate change in your favorite news outlets. Get a paid subscription and support independent journalism.

For a deeper dive, try Greentech Media, founded in 2007, which later under the guidance of Editor in Chief Stephen Lacey became the leading bridge publication, making industry technical insider news accessible to business readers outside the energy industry.

Act on what you know. Write letters, volunteer for causes, donate generously — and vote.

Clean energy is good business

Today, energy use and environmental impact are issues every large business takes seriously. Businesses now have three bottom lines instead of one.

Insurers and creditors are asking about carbon risk. Customers and investors are demanding corporate social responsibility reports. Funds are demanding divestiture from fossil fuel industries. Combating climate change is moving from a public cost to a possible path out of economic recession with green jobs.

If you invest, do it responsibly, and take part in governance.

There is a “silver bullet” for our sustainable energy future. It’s not an idea, a technology, a kilowatt, a dollar or pound — it’s the people who bring those things together to make a difference. That includes you.

Don’t stop caring.

Denis Du Bois
Founder
Energy Priorities Magazine

April 22, 2020

Each Earth Day, which is the anniversary of the founding of Energy Priorities, I hope it will be the year when sustainable energy policy will live up to the unbridled optimism I felt in 2004. I have been scrounging in recent months for ways to restock that optimism, and I found plenty.

Sustainable energy has survived retropolicy administrations before. Everyday environmentalists don’t remember the incoming George W. Bush administration as being so threatening because we didn’t have Facebook and Twitter back then. As expected, that administration was in the pockets of the fossil fuel industries. It was damaging, but not the end of the world.

Sustainable energy has survived an obstructionist Congress before. It was in exactly that political climate that the United States joined the rest of the world in the Paris climate accord, which large businesses including some in utilities, oil, autos and coal still defend.

“Why the US should stay in the Paris climate agreement”
Ban Ki-Moon and Robert Stavins in The Boston Globe

Granted, the outlook has taken a turn for the worst. If that wasn’t evident on inauguration day when the Republican administration’s “America First” philosophy put sustainable energy last, then it is evident today as that embryonic government tries to back out of the Paris Agreement and dismantle renewable energy subsidies, the EPA, and Energy Star.

Gloomy headlines notwithstanding, here are five reasons I feel optimistic for sustainable energy this year:

Businesses and consumers are global.

Not only is the rest of the world way ahead of the United States on sustainability, it is not slowing down. U.S. businesses are working to minimize that gap because being behind will limit growth. Outside this country there is no uncertainty or doubt about global warming; corporate silence on greenhouse gas emissions is complicity in the status quo.

Today it is hard to find a business of any size that confines its businesses within our borders. (My college advisors found it curious, decades ago, that I wanted to study small business and international business. Because, I said: soon all business would be global.) Globalism is real, it benefits Americans, and it’s here to stay.

Many major U.S. companies have embraced sustainable energy as part of broader efforts to bolster their triple bottom line. They see that their global marketplace is made up of consumers who prefer and, in the long run, will demand responsible products made by sustainability-minded businesses.

“Is American Enterprise More Powerful Than The President Of The United States?”
Ken Silverstein in FORBES

Investors hold the purse strings.

Even if environmental policies are rolled back, investors have shown that they won’t stand for giving businesses carte blanche to disregard environmental governance. Pension fund investors and university stakeholders have demanded divestiture from polluting businesses. Some of the largest funds have championed responsible investing for a decade or longer. Activist investors, even conservative institutional investors, can do the same in any public company including utilities.

“Investors Sharpen Focus on Social and Environmental Risks to Stocks”
Randall Smith in The New York Times

States are stepping up climate policy.

States have financial influence on the national stage. Some states will meet climate action commitments without the Paris agreement, which is good PR for Governors.

The states, not feds, make utility regulatory decisions about how much to support renewables and efficiency. And utilities always think far beyond the current administration, often planning 40 to 60 years out.

Governors can insist that “investing in American infrastructure” includes sustainable energy and a smarter grid. Or at least refuse to participate in building dead-end fossil fuel infrastructure like oil pipelines and coal terminals.

States also have legislative options including taxation. State-level carbon tax policies are an option for financially strapped states. A well crafted price on carbon applied to energy production and transportation fuels should be possible in several states.

To “backstop” is to pass state regulations replicating hard-earned federal regs that the GOP administration may let backslide by reversing or simply not enforcing them. And as new fed standards stall, states can set their own efficiency standards, for example forcing old energy-hog versions of appliances and machinery off the market.

Why did I prioritize businesses before the states? For one simple reason: states court businesses to locate and stay in their states. When big business talks, governors listen.

“With Trump in White House, states must take the lead on climate change”
U.S. Rep. Jared Polis of Boulder in The Denver Post

Cities are where we live.

People find it easier to support hometown initiatives that affect them and people they know directly. And it’s easier to communicate about those initiatives to a city-scale audience with a shared experience.

In Seattle, my home city, we identify with our city and feel proud of it, even when life isn’t peachy. Residents of most cities can say the same. There’s a sense of bonding together against a harsh world – or, at least, against competing sports teams.

If you’re a behavioral psychology nerd this is the in-group, or if you read a lot of Cialdini you know it as a unity principle.

Taken to the city council level, low-income communities can have outsize influence on clean energy, air and water. Watch what is happening with environmental justice communities, e.g., WE ACT in New York.

City policies can champion ideas that spread around the globe. Copenhagen taught the world how to do bicycle lanes, and Paris launched bike sharing, both of which have sprouted in other cities around the world. City ideas can champion policies that spread, too. Mayors should stand up for a good idea, even if they think it’s impossible in their city, because other cities will be inspired.

“Under Trump, look to cities and metros to power America forward”
Bruce Katz on Brookings.edu

Positioning is flexible.

The Republican administration will work to position renewable energy and efficiency as parts of a liberal climate conspiracy. That position can be counteracted.

Repositioning allows you to change the message without changing the end goal. How should sustainable energy be repositioned? Two important marketing lessons apply today more than before.

Solve the right problem.

First, we learned people buy what they want, not what companies wish they wanted. Case in point: Prospects for home energy efficiency respond better to messages of comfort than energy savings.

That’s an example of a principle that says businesses and consumers ultimately strive to make progress toward their ideal world. Their buying decisions are tightly coupled with the next step in that direction. For some it’s simple — saving money, or keeping up with the Joneses — but for many it is more complex.

Marketing messages can be constructed to appeal to multiple drivers. Businesses justify decisions based on factors such as revenue protection, building brand loyalty, or reducing compliance risk, as well as industry-specific financial metrics. Energy efficiency can be positioned to align with all of those.

Speak the right language.

Second, we mustn’t ignore that portion of the market that says they don’t care about the environment. George Lakoff explains very well why conservatives who disavow any belief or complicity in climate change will justify buying solar panels because they want to be energy independent.

That independence aligns with their inherent need to feel personally responsible. They might never believe that global warming is anthropomorphic, but they will believe that their utility is under attack by liberal policies and cannot be relied on to supply energy.

I am not suggesting that you launch any conspiracy theories. What I recommend is to look at the language you use in marketing sustainable energy and consider how to match benefits with conservative value drivers like responsibility, self-reliance and fatherhood.

Happy Earth Day. Keep up the good work. Look away from the daily drumbeat of negative headlines and focus on preparing for the retropolicy of the next four to eight years. Luck hasn’t created a national permanent shift to cleaner energy, but your perseverance will.

Comments? Please include your colleagues in your comments on social media by sharing this. Our social links are on this page including our LinkedIn Group and Facebook Page. On the other hand, if launching social media draws you down a rabbit hole of pessimistic headlines, you’re welcome to e-mail me instead.