Following a string of successes over the last few years, the clean energy landscape looks extremely bright. Last December in Paris, 196 countries, working with major corporations, agreed to a historic deal to address the challenges of climate disruption by limiting carbon pollution to 2 degrees C or less.

Congress also recently passed a five-year extension of both the wind Production Tax Credit and the solar Investment Tax Credit, which will create a reliable and predictable market environment that encourages growth and investment.

This article was updated in October 2023 to reflect the most recent industry developments.

We had the pleasure to go on the Growth Secrets Podcast with host Reade Milner. Reade runs an intriguing marketing consulting practice in Atlanta that helps a range of businesses market better.

By Melissa Baldwin and Mike Casey

Most clean economy businesses need to build profiles for both their company and individual members of their executive teams. Their reasons vary, often by where the company is in the business life cycle. We find a lot of our clients’ profile building needs clusters at these points: 

#Cleantechers - Few electrons in the universe will move differently because I'm named as a finalist with honorable mention for the Cleanies' "Trailblazer" award.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy I got that far. My mom will be thrilled. My kids might nod their heads (Ashlyn Casey). Maybe my wife will say "good job" this weekend before telling me to clean out the dog run.

But I think there's bigger significance here that's worth pointing out. I remember when clean economy was so nascent that an awards program would have been laughable.

We know times have changed because:
1.) This award program actually exists.
2.) There's enough momentum and growth in our sectors that companies and people apply/submit others for consideration. Lots of them.
3.) People actively compete to win.

It's super gratifying to see clean economy continue to expand. Bigger trade shows, increased association budgets and award programs are all leading indicators. That is what's worth celebrating.

Congrats to winners Marion Hill, Chris Perron, Michael Eckhart and co-honorable mention Janani Ramkumar.

Also, John Engel and Julia Pyper for winning their respective categories.

Cleantechers, below I share some first impression takeaways from Tuesday’s election results. I offer these through the lens of my time in politics (25 years) but detached from any opinion I have about candidates or political views. These thoughts are offered strictly from a communications mechanics perspective, with the hopes that it’s of use to fellow clean economy communicators in your work going forward.

This article was updated in November 2022 to reflect the most recent industry developments.

Video Marketing for the Renewable Energy Sector

We often hear from our clients and friends in cleantech that one of their biggest challenges is reaching and educating a wide and varied range of audiences. Whether it’s utility executives, corporate customers, policymakers or homeowners, an effective cleantech media communicator can usually get to a win, given the opportunity to sit across the table and have a personal interaction. But your team can’t be everywhere at once, and it can be difficult to reach these audiences at scale and educate them on your company’s value proposition. 

I had the pleasure recently of talking with Joseph Batir, host of the Energy Transition Solutions podcast.

Joe and I talked about:

- Why I’ve found that working in the private sector is easier than working in politics or the nonprofit world via more rationalized client motives (4:25).

- It’s also more satisfying from a client-impact standpoint, because “You cannot sit at an environmental group and regulate the coal industry into sustainability. Some industries simply have to go. They cannot be kept around. Some industries like cement making can be made much more sustainable.” (13:00)"

- How few clean economy sectors are new industries because they’re not directly disrupting incumbents (13:59) and how disrupted incumbents push back hard through our form of legalized corruption known as campaign contributions. They do that instead of just handing over market share and going willingly out of business (15:19) “The disrupted are constantly reacting to the disruptors and the disruptors must manage that with fewer resources than the disrupted have.”

- Why B2B companies’ default reliance on jargony content hurts their sales and violates the Richard Branson rule of narrative simplicity “Any fool can complicate something. It takes a master to simplify it.” (27:10) and why your marketing collateral should be able to pass the “supermarket checkout test” (29:50) because it accommodates the reality that humans make emotional decisions first in order to make a rationale decision (31:27).

Tigercomm talks a lot about improving social media strategies for cleantech companies to compete with incumbent fossil fuel interests. We’ve worked with a strategic SEO agency, Rampiq, for the past few years on our own site and are continuously impressed with the results. We’ve asked Rampiq to write a guest article explaining how clean economy companies can use SEO to boost brand recognition, sales, and the visibility of their products.

B2B Purchase Decisions In Cleantech And The Digital-Social Criticality Scale

Across clean economy sectors, the sales and marketing teams we talk to share a growing frustration: it’s gotten harder to get renewable energy customer prospects to engage during the marketing process. They’re all too familiar with sending that seventh “touch base” email to a prospect they’ve connected with at the trade show and hearing nothing back. This experience has three main sources: what we’re calling the “VAR Phenomenon” (Volume, Attention, Relevance), and it's increasingly becoming a challenge in the smartphone age.