There is no doubt that addressing climate change has become a, if not the, defining challenge of the 21st century. The task will require substantial scientific innovation and major policy change at all levels.
But people at the individual level can and must contribute to curbing these emissions as well. Making changes to transportation, energy use and diet can objectively reduce one’s personal emissions, and this contribution adds up. Researchers at Project Drawdown found individual and household actions represent between 25-30% of the total global emissions reduction needed to avert 1.5°C warming. If only 5-10% of Americans adopted just six of the highest-impact behaviors, it could collectively lower current national emissions by more than 400 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent per year, or about 7% overall annually.
To address this challenge, AVDF supports organizations that specialize in strategic communication aimed at changing individual and organizational behavior in ways that will mitigate climate change and its negative effects.
With this goal in mind, AVDF awarded its first grant of $1 million to Potential Energy in 2021. The project included three main components: campaigns that targeted suburban women and mothers, identifying and reaching new audiences and the dissemination of learned communication strategies to other like-minded organizations. Potential Energy was successful in each of these activities.
Potential Energy’s prior research showed suburban women to be a strategic demographic as they boast large populations in key states and are a group amendable to change on the climate issue. The organization launched Science Moms, an initiative that uses scientists that are also mothers to persuade parents to take steps against climate change. The work has been covered by major national media, to include appearances by some of the spokespeople on CBS news and the Kelly Clarkson show.
Potential Energy created two major campaigns that featured science moms voicing concerns about their children’s future in light of climate change. A campaign titled “Cleanversations” featured the clean energy benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act, emphasizing the importance of clean energy in relation to the health of children, families and communities. An expansion of Science Moms social media supported engagement with interested mothers with advertisements such as “Smoking Bus” and “Game Show.”
The second campaign focused on extreme weather with rapid-response messages aimed to help suburban women associate climate change with relevant weather events. This demographic was experiencing extreme weather but was not attributing the cause to climate change. The campaign highlighted this link through advertisements such as a “Science Moms Explain” series that discussed flooding, wildfires and drought. Potential Energy also developed an “Enough is Enough” series that focused on floods, smoke and drought. The strategy for this campaign was to monitor weather events in target states and then as extreme events occurred, target audiences were shown relevant advertisements through social media.
Together, the campaigns added about 500,000 strong supporters for climate action among moderate suburban women in the target states, and sustained support for climate action among five million of these women.
“Potential Energy has established itself as an organization that uses rigorous methods and cutting-edge tools to create campaigns that move people to take action on climate change,” said AVDF Director of Programs John Churchill.
Potential Energy’s awareness campaigns generally take felt needs of their audience as their starting point. The organization’s work is guided by people’s identity and not solely on the issue of climate change itself.
“We need to talk to different audiences in different ways to grow the movement and make significant progress. Each audience has their own reasons to care and their own motivations to get involved,” said Eric Asche, President of the Potential Energy Coalition.
With the second component of their project, Potential Energy conducted a large-scale and comprehensive study on consumer knowledge and attitudes concerning clean energy. The study used a variety of methods and focused on the content and consequences of the Inflation Reduction Act. The study found that the most-effective climate messaging is human-centric and locally focused.
As a result of the research, in 2023 Potential Energy launched a new state-based clean energy campaign in Michigan, “Powered by Michigan.” After only three months, the percentage of Michiganders who strongly supported clean energy increased from 35% to 51%, and Potential Energy estimates that about half of this boost was because of their campaign.
In addition to the America-centric research and its findings, Potential Energy completed a complementary global research report, called “Later is Too Late.” One key takeaway is that the most persuasive messaging focuses not on jobs, economic prosperity, ending injustice, or extreme weather, but on concern for the next generation.
The final element of the project was to build and implement communications strategies so that the broader community of climate organizations could benefit. To this end, Potential Energy launched a newsletter, called “That’s Interesting,” which is read by several thousand people who work in the marketing and climate sectors. They also produced a brief guide, “Talk Like a Human,” that summarizes for general audiences what they have learned from their research about how to communicate on climate. Among other publicity, this guide was praised effusively in The Guardian as an essential tool for the climate sector.
In addition, Potential Energy conducted dozens of briefings on their work, reaching many hundreds of stakeholders. Many of these were convenings of specific and strategic audiences, such as for-profit companies, climate organizations, influential YouTube creators, donors and more. One result of their work is a deeper relationship with Meta, which awarded them a large ad-credit grant and has agreed to a collaborative study that will test the effectiveness of climate campaigns on their platform.
Because of their researched communication strategies, Potential Energy is seeing their recommendations adopted in the public domain. The organization uses innovation and an analytical approach to persuade Americans to act against climate change.