Facts alone don’t win an argument, and neither does passion. You can have sound reasoning, delivered with energy and grounded in data, but if you state your case in a way that ignores the things your audience really cares about, you’ll never win people over.
We see that playing out in conversations around clean energy and climate innovation.
Fixing Climate Communications, a recent report from Potential Energy Coalition and The Rockefeller Foundation, examines which climate language moves people and what falls flat. The facts don’t have to be softened to land — they just need to be delivered in language people already use to talk about their own lives. “Achieving net zero carbon emissions” and “acting on climate change” describe the same goal, but only one persuades. Spoiler: it’s not net zero.
That distinction matters more given where the conversation stands right now. Trust in sustainability messaging is in decline, and climate pops up less in both the news and the boardroom. Global climate news coverage is down 38% from its 2021 peak, and mentions of climate and ESG on S&P 500 earnings calls have fallen by roughly three-quarters. The report argues institutions are pulling back at exactly the wrong moment.
So, how can clean energy institutions counter the trend? Here’s what stood out to us.
Kill the jargon. “Net zero” ranked dead last among nine environmental priorities in every country surveyed, trailing simpler frames like “acting on climate change” and “reducing air pollution.” Terms like “decarbonization,” “high-performance buildings,” and “ESG” read as insider language, not news. Reserve technical terms for when a reporter needs precision, and keep them out of press release headlines and pitch docs entirely.
Consequences beat jobs messaging by nearly 2-to-1. Messages built around health, household costs, and pollution were roughly twice as effective as “jobs and innovation” framing at building support for climate action. In the U.S., “Impact of Overheating Planet” was the strongest persuader; “Energy Innovation” produced no statistically significant lift. “Green jobs” and economic-growth framing have ranked among the weakest performers across six years of Potential Energy’s tracking. That doesn’t mean abandoning innovation and workforce messaging. Both remain vital to local economies and the workers entering them. Jobs will never be a bad message — it just needs to be grounded in concrete, everyday language rather than left to sell itself.
Frame clean energy as additive, not restrictive. In the U.S., 72% of respondents support building more clean energy now, but the framing determines whether that support holds. The U.S. has the widest partisan divide of any country tested — a 39-point gap — yet nearly every message still moved right-leaning Americans when it was framed as additive: energy independence, domestic production, and cheaper, more stable bills. Restrictive language like bans, mandates, or efficiency codes did the opposite.
Silence backfires, even in red states. Nearly every message moved right-leaning Americans despite that partisan divide: conservative audiences are more persuadable than the current retreat from climate messaging assumes. The takeaway: meet people where they are instead of going quiet to avoid controversy.
None of this calls for a wholesale rewrite of how climate and clean energy organizations talk about their work. These are guardrails: lead with consequences people feel day to day, frame clean energy as more and cheaper rather than mandated, and don’t let caution keep you silent.