What I Learned At American Clean Power
Michael Grossman • April 6, 2026
Clean Energy Is Caught In The Culture Wars
Once upon a time, renewable energy projects could win public approval based on community benefits, like sponsoring Little League baseball teams, building a playground, or writing monthly checks to affected landowners.
Then the fossil fuel industry ratcheted up the misinformation campaigns online, and Fox News made the Solyndra bankruptcy as famous as the Lehman Brothers’ demise.
A sector of the public that was already feeling marginalized amidst a rapidly changing economic landscape had become radicalized, a trend that social media algorithms were all too eager to exploit for profit.
Public hearings for clean energy projects, which had always been dicey because of NIMBY concerns, became lightning rods for America’s urban-rural cultural divide. When well-meaning local politicians and planning boards became the focal point of small-town ire, they punted.
Welcome to siting and permitting a solar, wind, battery storage, or transmission line project in America in 2026.
Speaker after speaker bore out the statistics: fewer than 10% of the projects on paper ever produce a kilowatt of energy, and the hill gets steeper every year, sometimes for valid reasons like a previous developer didn’t follow through on promises, or because neighbors were concerned about the effect a renewable energy project might have on the value of their nearby home.
More often, though, the reason has more to do with rural communities feeling like they are bearing the burden of an urbanist green agenda.
The First Step In Solving A Problem Is Admitting One Exists
The good news that came out of ACP is that every developer I spoke to understands they need to double down on community outreach if they want to get permits approved for their projects, and some of the development companies are already making strides by showing up early and often in a community, remaining a positive presence after the project is completed, and generating electrons.
The proof is clear when you look at LinkedIn at the number of community outreach, external affairs, and stakeholder relations employees you can find at many of the more prominent energy development companies. More time and money are being spent to assuage community concerns that they are more than just another extractive industry looking to make a quick buck.
If only it were that easy…
Timing Is Everything
One of the panel speakers was asked whether a project developer should remain silent about their project until they had acquired the land and were ready to announce.
The speaker wryly pointed out that in a rural community, as soon as you knock on the first door to inquire about their property, the entire town knows.
That’s how rural communication networks operate.
Had I been asked that question, I would’ve answered, “In the internet age, there is no such thing as ‘under the radar’ anymore.”
That question revealed a disquieting lack of understanding of how quickly opponents can mobilize and define a project even before it gets off the ground. And because we live in such distinct information ecosystems, a developer from outside the community is unlikely to know that opposition is building until it spreads like a cancer.
Your Project Is Either Ahead Or Behind
“Keeping up with the Joneses” is an indictment of America’s consumer culture. In project development, once the opponents are ahead of you in defining the merits, it’s nearly impossible to keep up.
To increase the likelihood that an energy project is completed, you have to be ahead of the Joneses from the outset…and stay ahead.
Several tactics can help:
- Public opinion research can capture the pulse of a community, and it’s now more affordable because online surveys don’t require live callers.
- Consumer data, combined with digital tools, can target potential supporters and opponents with incredible accuracy, allowing a developer to build trust and educate those who are open to the project BEFORE the public hearings without stirring up a hornet’s nest of anger.
- Text and email databases of supporters can give you unfiltered access to real people in the community, not just stakeholders, building trust over time, which is especially critical when fending off fossil fuel front groups that are adept at spreading misinformation.
Project development needs to be treated like a political campaign because, like Election Day, there’s a winner and a loser, and the winner is usually the side that defined the debate.
The Messenger Is As Important As The Message
It’s no secret that rural Americans are less likely to believe outsiders. They love where they live; they like it the way it is; and they want to keep it that way. Trust is acquired in inches over long periods of time. This was a leitmotif throughout the ACP conference.
The obvious conclusion is that a developer or a development company isn’t necessarily the best person to speak on behalf of the project, especially when opposition arises.
In a disaggregated media landscape, there is no such thing as a sole source messenger. Trying to control everything shared about a clean energy project is like being stuck in a rush hour traffic jam when you need to get to the hospital for urgent care.
Allow community supporters to create Facebook pages, moderate the content, and produce their own shareable content. An energy development company’s communications shop that’s a thousand miles away from your project and is overseeing multiple projects at the same time can’t possibly keep up with events on the ground.
And if you’re creating a website for the project, feature the locals prominently on the homepage so it doesn’t appear to be a solely for-profit endeavor.
The words from the stage were clear: if you want to win over rural communities, you need third-party advocates who are willing to vouch for your integrity and commitment to their way of life. And those people can’t just be the stakeholders you check off on a list, like the Chamber CEO, the environmental group, or the elected official. You also need regular people who attend high school football games on a Friday night and church on Sundays. They have credibility with their neighbors you can’t buy.
One of our most successful clean energy campaigns enlisted pastors, whose congregants suffered disproportionately from pollution-related asthma and cardiopulmonary disease, to attend hearings and speak to elected officials about the benefits of low-emission fuels. They offset scare tactics from the oil industry about rising gas prices.
Your messengers are what give your message credibility.
Digital Grassroots and Community Outreach Are Pennies On The Dollar Compared To Failure
If the people on the stage at ACP know what needs to be done, and the developers in the audience agree with them, why are so many projects still failing the urban-rural divide?
It has to do with who wasn’t in attendance at ACP: the C-Suite.
Several attendees from different companies spoke about a common obstacle: the people who make the budget decisions, whether in the U.S., Canada, or Europe, see community outreach as a liability on the spreadsheet in an industry where margins are thin.
Fair enough, but the retort is that even if a CEO sees community relations as a largely wasted cost of doing business, it’s still far cheaper than the sunk costs in time, staff, and budget when the majority of your projects never net a single dollar.
It reminds me of a famous commercial
where a grizzled garage mechanic underneath a car speaks about changing your car’s oil filter as a cheap alternative to major engine repair. The ad concludes with the mechanic pulling himself out from under the car, grabbing the four-dollar oil filter, and saying, “You can pay me now…or pay me later."
We all know someone who never changed their engine oil, and then expressed surprise when the inevitable happens, or worse, says they didn’t know you needed to change the oil. The next time your CEO questions your budget request, ask them why they take their car in for a regular service.
Going Forward
Like it or not, if we want more clean energy projects to move forward, we have to accept that clean energy isn’t a bug of America’s culture wars, it’s a feature.
And the places we want to develop projects on large tracts of land require those who’ve been inundated with messages that climate change isn’t real and that green energy is a government-subsidized scam to overcome that cognitive dissonance.
Developers can’t overcome that with the old playbook
of showing up when the project is announced, getting a few prominent citizens to endorse the project, writing a few checks for goodwill, and promoting community benefits as the only tools in the toolbox to get permit approvals.
The successful equation is embedding in a community early, taking their pulse before a project submits plans, finding community supporters who can drive your message across their networks with a looser grip from company headquarters, producing shareable digital content regularly to stay ahead of the Joneses (the organized opposition and front groups), build your email list so you can have direct access to your audience both to educate and respond, and keep the focus on how your project helps protect the community they love rather than focuses on the benefits the project provides.
Denmark leads on climate—but even there, utility-scale solar is facing backlash. The community fault lines around clean energy projects worldwide can be overcome.
Clean energy developers do not lose projects because their technology fails. They lose projects because they misunderstand how decisions get made in the communities where those projects are proposed. If you spend enough time around project development, you start to see the same pattern. A site pencils. The resource is there. Interconnection works. Capital is lined up. Then the project enters the public process and something shifts. Opposition forms. Local officials hesitate. The project stalls or disappears. That outcome is not rare. Roughly one out of every three large clean energy projects in the United States never reaches construction . At the same time, the environment around these projects is getting harder. Research from the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University tracks hundreds of renewable energy projects across dozens of states facing organized opposition, along with a growing number of local laws restricting development. Across the country, local resistance is no longer episodic. It is structural. Most developers respond by trying to improve how they explain their projects. That is not where the problem sits. The most common messaging mistake clean energy developers make is this: They treat communication as explanation when it is actually coalition building. The Illusion Of Stakeholder Engagement Developers often approach communication by identifying “stakeholders” and building a plan to engage them. The list is familiar. Elected officials, regulators, adjacent landowners, business groups. Those people matter, but they are not the community. Communities are not organized through formal roles. They are organized through trust . Influence sits with people who do not appear on stakeholder maps. A pastor, a co-op manager, a respected farmer, a small business owner. These are the people others listen to when they are deciding what a project means. When engagement is limited to formal stakeholders, developers miss the informal networks where opinions actually form. That gap is where opposition gains ground. Developers Try To Be The Messenger Even when developers engage early, they often assume they should be the ones delivering the message. They have the data. They understand the project. They can explain the benefits. That logic makes sense internally. It is less effective externally. People trust those who share their lived experience . A developer entering from outside the community is asking for trust before it exists. A local voice does not need to make that same ask. This is not a communications nuance. It is the difference between being heard and being discounted. Projects that move forward tend to have credible local voices who can explain the project in terms that make sense to their neighbors. Projects that fail often rely on the developer to carry that burden alone. What is actually at stake These dynamics are easy to underestimate because they are not reflected in financial models. A utility-scale wind or solar project in the 50 to 100 megawatt range typically requires $75 million to $200 million in upfront capital, depending on technology, location, and interconnection costs. Over a 20 to 30 year lifespan, those projects can generate hundreds of millions of dollars in contracted revenue, particularly when backed by long-term power purchase agreements. When a project fails at the permitting stage, that capital is not redeployed cleanly. Time is lost. Development costs are written off. Market windows close. This is not a marginal issue. It is a core risk to the business model. The New Pressure: Data Centers The stakes are rising because demand is rising. The rapid growth of artificial intelligence and cloud computing is driving a surge in data center development across the United States. These facilities require enormous and continuous electricity loads. Recent analysis from Pew Research Center notes that data center electricity consumption in the U.S. is expected to increase significantly as AI adoption expands, placing new pressure on regional grids. At the same time, research from Columbia Business School highlights a growing race to secure power for these facilities, with developers competing for access to clean and reliable electricity. Additional analysis from Environmental and Energy Study Institute warns that data center demand is already reshaping grid planning and could complicate climate goals if new supply does not come online fast enough. This creates a collision. On one side, data center developers need large volumes of electricity, increasingly from low-carbon sources. On the other, local opposition is making it harder to build the very projects required to meet that demand. The result is a tightening constraint on both infrastructure and timelines. Coalition Building As A Development Function In this environment, coalition building is not a communications add-on. It is a core development function. Projects that succeed tend to follow a different sequence. They identify credible local voices early. They invest time in understanding how the project intersects with local concerns. They allow the community to shape how the project is discussed rather than introducing a fully formed narrative late in the process. This work often happens before a project is publicly announced. It rarely appears in investor updates. It is difficult to quantify. It is also one of the clearest predictors of whether a project moves forward. A Different Way To Think About Messaging If you treat messaging as explanation, your goal is clarity. You want people to understand what the project is and why it matters. If you treat messaging as coalition building, your goal is different. You are working to ensure that when the project becomes public, there are already trusted voices within the community who understand it, can speak to it, and see a place for it. That shift changes everything. It changes who speaks. It changes when conversations begin. It changes how opposition is received. The Broader Implication The clean energy transition is often framed as a technological and financial challenge. Those elements matter. Progress on both has been significant. At the same time, the growing number of local restrictions, the scale of organized opposition, and the surge in electricity demand from data centers point to a different constraint. The limiting factor is not always whether a project can be built. It is whether a community is prepared to accept it. Developers who recognize that early and build coalitions accordingly get projects built. Developers who do not often find themselves trying to explain a project after the decision has already been made.
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Learn why many clean energy projects fail before construction. Local opposition, permitting risk, and public narrative shape outcomes more than technology.
The Quiet Crisis in Clean Energy Development The United States is experiencing a permitting crisis for renewable energy projects. Between 2018 and 2023, roughly 30% of utility-scale wind and solar projects were canceled during the siting process, often because of local opposition or zoning restrictions. At the same time, opposition is spreading rapidly across the country. Researchers tracking renewable project conflicts have documented: • 498 contested renewable projects across 49 states • 459 counties and municipalities with severe restrictions on renewable development In other words, the challenge facing clean energy deployment is not primarily technological. It is political and social. When a Wind Project Dies Last week, a county commission in Washington State placed a moratorium on new wind energy development. That decision effectively halted the Harvest Hills Wind Project, a project proposed by Vestas, one of the most experienced wind companies in the world. The turbines themselves were not controversial from an engineering standpoint. Wind power is now one of the most mature energy technologies in the global power system. Yet the project still collapsed. The reason lies in the way public opinion forms around infrastructure projects. The New Reality of Local Politics Developers now operate in a communications environment where information spreads instantly and credibility is fragmented. Anyone with a social media account can claim expertise. Algorithms amplify outrage. And misinformation circulates faster than technical explanations. Even claims that wind turbines cause cancer — a theory repeatedly debunked by medical researchers — continue to appear in local debates. Once that narrative spreads within a community, the formal permitting process often becomes the stage for a conflict that has already been decided informally. Why the Old Engagement Model Fails The traditional developer playbook looks transparent on paper: 1. Announce the project 2. Launch a website with a project overview and FAQ 3. Invite residents to public meetings But when residents encounter the project for the first time through zoning notices or political social media posts, the project feels imposed rather than understood. By the time formal stakeholder engagement begins, the conversation often starts from mistrust. Farmers Understand the Problem Most wind and solar projects are located in rural areas. Farmers in those communities know something developers sometimes overlook: You prepare the soil before planting the seed. A farmer who plants before the soil is ready wastes the crop. Community engagement works the same way. If developers wait until a project is announced to begin outreach, the ground is already hardened. Grassroots Outreach Is Cheap Insurance Large energy projects often cost hundreds of millions of dollars, yet communications budgets for those projects are frequently minimal. True grassroots outreach typically costs less than one percent of project value, yet it can determine whether the project survives local politics. That outreach must reach residents where they already gather online: • Pre-roll ads on YouTube • Facebook and Instagram • Twitter/X (yes, even Twitter, because it's still a home for political junkies) • Streaming audio like Spotify and Pandora These platforms allow developers to communicate long before the permitting process begins. Projects Are About People Most renewable project websites emphasize infrastructure. Turbine height. Generation capacity. Interconnection details. Tax base. Those facts matter, but they rarely build trust. Communities want to know something simpler: How does this benefit me? Who in our community supports this? In rural areas, credibility travels through relationships. Residents trust farmers, business owners, and local leaders far more than corporate statements. A project website dominated by technical diagrams tells one story. A project website featuring community voices tells another. A Model That Worked Washington State’s Clean Fuel Standard faced intense opposition from the oil industry, but the policy ultimately passed because our team built a broad coalition before the final legislative fight began. That coalition included communities environmental campaigns often overlook: timber workers, minority businesses, and farmers, who were often the target of oil industry hysterics about gas prices. We spent months educating those communities before asking them to take action. When the opposition campaign intensified, the coalition already existed. The Future of Project Development Clean energy developers have historically thought of themselves as engineering organizations. In today’s political environment, they must also think like community organizers. That means: • Beginning outreach before project announcements • Engaging entire communities, not just formal stakeholders • Communicating through digital channels where residents already gather • Elevating trusted local voices The energy transition depends on infrastructure. But infrastructure ultimately depends on trust.
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A brand is not your logo. It’s not your color palette. It’s not your typography. It’s not your tagline. A brand is your voice and your story. The most beautifully designed logo in the world is irrelevant if there isn’t a narrative beneath it—one that carries meaning across platforms, resonates with a specific audience, and communicates why your company exists. In cleantech, this distinction matters more than founders often realize. Because when your product is complex, technical, and capital-intensive, your brand becomes the bridge between your science and your market. A Logo Without Meaning Is Just a Shape Many early-stage companies invest in visual identity before investing in narrative clarity, as if you aren’t a real company until you have a logo, debating colors, symbols, and typography without answering the fundamental questions: • Who do we serve? • What problem do we solve? • Why does it matter now? • Why are we uniquely positioned to win? Creating a logo without answering the above questions first reminds me of the famous line from Alice in Wonderland: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” Research supports this distinction. According to the Nielsen Norman Group – Brand Credibility and User Perception , users form judgments about credibility based on the clarity of the message and its relevance—not purely on visual design. Visual polish without substance may attract attention, but it does not sustain trust. In other words, aesthetics are secondary to meaning. A logo is a symbol. Symbols only matter when they represent something meaningful. Nike: A Logo That Carries a Story Consider Nike. The swoosh is one of the most recognizable logos in the world. It is minimal. Clean. Uncomplicated. But the swoosh alone does not create emotional impact. Nike has spent decades pairing that logo with a consistent narrative: you can be the best version of yourself. The logo tells athletes—and non-athletes alike—that they can fly. Nike does not lead with rubber compounds or stitching technology. They lead with aspiration. Their campaigns reinforce belief. The logo has remained stable, but the company has invested billions in associating it with performance, resilience, identity, and ambition. Brand equity research confirms why this works. According to McKinsey & Company – The Value of Getting Brand Building Right , companies that consistently reinforce a clear, emotionally resonant brand story outperform peers in long-term growth and pricing power. The swoosh works because the story works. Cleantech Is Technical—But It’s Also Aspirational Cleantech founders sometimes resist branding comparisons to consumer companies. “We’re not selling shoes.” “We’re selling grid storage.” “We’re building carbon capture systems.” That’s true. But you are still selling transformation. You are selling: • Energy resilience • Regulatory compliance • Cost stability • Operational continuity • Emissions reduction • Long-term viability These outcomes are aspirational. Cleantech may be technical, but the impact it delivers is planet-altering. That emotional weight is powerful—if you communicate it clearly. Research from Edelman Trust Barometer 2024 shows that trust in companies is driven heavily by clarity of purpose and perceived long-term commitment—not product features alone. Your brand must communicate belief, not just capability. Generic Taglines Signal Generic Positioning Now consider the tagline problem. Cleantech websites are full of statements like: • “Powering a Sustainable Future.” • “Driving the Transition to Net Zero.” • “Innovating for a Greener Tomorrow.” Each one sounds polished. Mission-driven. Serious. Each one is also interchangeable. If five companies can use the same tagline without modification, it is not a strategic differentiator. It is a category filler. Strong brands communicate specificity. According to Harvard Business Review – Competing on Customer Experience , companies that articulate clearly how they solve a defined customer problem outperform those relying on vague mission-driven messaging. A tagline should drive the audience to an obvious conclusion: This company is one of one. If your tagline does not signal: • Who you serve • What you solve • Why it matters • Why you are uniquely positioned Then it is not strengthening your brand. It is simply occupying space. Branding Is Strategic Positioning Branding is not decoration. It is positioning. Positioning answers: • Who this is for • Who this is NOT for • What problem do you solve? • Why can't competitors replicate you? • What belief anchors your work? Without that clarity, your brand defaults to comparison. And comparison often defaults to price. Research from Boston Consulting Group – The Power of Brand in B2B confirms that even in technical B2B industries, strong brands command pricing premiums and reduce perceived risk. Cleantech is no exception. If your brand doesn’t signal differentiation, the market will evaluate you on cost. That is a race you do not want to run. Voice Is the Core of Brand Consistency If branding is more than a logo, what defines it? Voice! Voice shows up in: • Website copy • Investor decks • Sales sheets • LinkedIn posts • White papers • Conference presentations If your voice changes across platforms, your brand fractures. If your executive team describes the company differently from your sales team, your brand weakens. Branding is a narrative discipline. Nike’s swoosh works because the story is reinforced everywhere. Your cleantech company does not need a billion-dollar ad budget. But it does need message consistency across platforms. Consistency builds familiarity. Familiarity builds trust. Trust accelerates decisions. Your Brand Should Make the Audience the Hero One of the most common branding mistakes in cleantech is positioning the company as the hero. “We are saving the planet.” “We are transforming energy.” “We are redefining sustainability.” That sounds ambitious. But it centers the company, not the audience. A stronger brand narrative positions the customer as the hero and your company as the guide. Instead of: “We power a sustainable future.” Consider: “We help industrial operators reduce compliance risk without sacrificing uptime.” Now the buyer sees themselves. Branding must create recognition before admiration. If Your Logo Disappeared Tomorrow, Would Your Story Survive? A useful test: If your logo disappeared tomorrow, would your audience still understand who you serve and why you matter? If the answer is no, your branding is surface-level. A strong brand survives without a visual identity because the story carries it. Nike’s swoosh matters because of decades of narrative reinforcement. Your cleantech brand must stand on narrative clarity first—and design second. Final Thoughts Branding is more than a logo. It is more than a tagline. It is the story that undergirds your visual identity and carries it across every platform. A logo is a symbol. A tagline is a signal. But your brand is the belief that ties them together. Cleantech solves technical problems with planetary implications. That is not small work. Your brand should reflect that scale—not through vague mission language, but through clear positioning and meaningful narrative. The strongest brands do not win because they are the prettiest. They win because they mean something. If your tagline could belong to anyone, it belongs to no one. And if your logo does not represent a defined belief shared with your audience, it is just a shape. Build the story first. Then let the symbol carry it.
Cleantech companies love white papers. They love technical briefs. They love dense PDFs packed with charts, tables, and footnotes. Unfortunately, your audience doesn’t consume information that way anymore. If your marketing strategy still treats video as optional—or something you’ll “get to later”—you’re actively choosing to be invisible in the places that matter most. This isn’t a creative preference. It’s a distribution reality. And the data is unambiguous. Your Audience Is on YouTube—Whether You Like It or Not Every year, Pew Research Center releases its survey on how Americans use social media. And every year, the results reinforce the same conclusion: YouTube dominates. According to Pew Research Center – Americans’ Social Media Use 2025 , YouTube is the most widely used platform across every major demographic category: • Age • Gender • Education level • Household income • Political affiliation • Urban vs. rural Nearly half of all YouTube users report visiting the platform daily. No other platform comes close to that level of reach and consistency. So when cleantech founders ask whether they should be producing video, the better question is: Why would you avoid the one platform your audience already uses? “Because That’s Where the Money Is” There’s an old story about the bank robber Willie Sutton. When asked why he robbed banks, he famously replied: “Because that’s where the money is.” The same logic applies here. YouTube isn’t just another social platform. It’s where your buyers, investors, partners, regulators, and future hires already spend time. They go there to learn, to research, and to understand complex topics—exactly the kind of topics cleantech companies work on. If you’re not there, someone else is explaining your category for you. And you may not like how they’re doing it. Cleantech Is Complex— Video Reduces Friction Cleantech products are rarely simple. They involve infrastructure, policy, science, operations, and long-term outcomes. Asking someone to understand that through text alone is a heavy lift. Video lowers the barrier. A two-minute explainer video can do what ten pages of copy often can’t: • Define the problem • Show empathy • Differentiate your solution • Demonstrate scale • Establish credibility • Humanize your team • Reduce perceived risk This matters because buying cleantech solutions isn’t about impulse—it’s about confidence. Video builds confidence faster than any other format. YouTube Is Not Social Media—It’s the Second Largest Search Engine One of the most misunderstood aspects of YouTube is that it’s not primarily a “social” platform. It’s a discovery engine. Google has confirmed repeatedly that YouTube functions as the world’s second-largest search engine. People don’t just scroll—they search. According to Google – How People Use Video to Make Decisions , users increasingly rely on video to evaluate products, understand services, and validate purchasing decisions—especially for high-consideration industries. That describes cleantech perfectly. When someone searches: • “How anaerobic digesters work” • “Is RNG profitable” • “Utility-scale battery storage risks” • “How to reduce methane emissions” They’re not looking for marketing copy. They’re looking for explanation. If your company isn’t providing that explanation, someone else will. Video Builds Trust Faster Than Text Trust is the limiting factor in cleantech adoption. Buyers aren’t just evaluating performance—they’re evaluating you. They want to know: • Do you understand their problem? • Can you explain it clearly? • Do you seem credible? • Will you still be here in five or ten years? Video answers these questions instantly. Seeing your engineers, leadership team, or operators speak confidently about the work creates familiarity. Familiarity reduces risk. Reduced risk accelerates decisions. Research from Edelman – Trust and Technology Special Report shows that audiences are significantly more likely to trust companies that communicate transparently and visibly, especially in emerging technology sectors. Video is the fastest way to do that. Nearly All Internet Traffic Is Becoming Video This trend isn’t slowing down—it’s accelerating. According to Cisco – Annual Internet Report , video accounts for the majority of global internet traffic and continues to grow year over year. That means: • More people are consuming video • Platforms are prioritizing video • Text-only content is losing distribution power If your cleantech marketing strategy is still built around written content alone, you’re swimming against the current. ________________________________________ Video Doesn’t Replace Written Content—It Multiplies It This is where many founders misunderstand the role of video. Producing video doesn’t mean abandoning blogs, reports, or white papers. It means creating a content engine. One video can be: • A YouTube upload • A LinkedIn clip • A website explainer • A sales enablement asset • A conference follow-up • A blog transcript • A press resource Video gives you leverage. Instead of writing ten separate pieces of content, you produce one strong video and distribute it everywhere your audience already is. That’s efficiency—not extra work. What Types of Video Actually Work for Cleantech This is not about flashy production or viral trends. The most effective cleantech video content is: • Empathetic • Educational • Solutions-Based • Clear • Credible Examples that work consistently: • Benefits that address pain points • Short technical breakdowns • Founder or expert commentary • Project walk-throughs • Pilot results explanations • Market or policy context videos Clever videos are nice. Clear videos are better. The goal is reducing uncertainty. Video Supports Long Sales Cycles Cleantech sales cycles are long by nature. Video helps in ways text cannot: • Prospects can rewatch explanations • Internal champions can share videos upward • Investors can evaluate without meetings • Regulators can understand context faster Video becomes a silent sales partner—working when you’re not in the room. It also filters leads. People who take the time to watch your content are self-selecting as serious. That improves sales efficiency and reduces wasted conversations. The Real Risk Is Not Producing Video The biggest mistake cleantech companies make isn’t producing bad video. It’s producing none at all. When you avoid video: • Your competitors define the narrative • Your category is explained by outsiders • Your credibility is assumed instead of demonstrated • Your expertise stays hidden • Your brand feels distant and abstract Meanwhile, the competing companies that do produce video capture the visibility high ground for those seeking solutions in your niche. This Isn’t About Being Trendy—It’s About Being Visible Producing video content isn’t a marketing fad. It’s a response to how people now consume information. Your audience has already made the shift. The Pew data makes that clear. The internet traffic data confirms it. The trust research supports it. YouTube is where your audience is. As Willie Sutton might say— that’s where the opportunity is. Final Thoughts Cleantech companies don’t lose attention because their work isn’t important. They lose attention because they fail to communicate in the formats people actually use. Video is no longer optional. It’s no longer experimental. It’s no longer “nice to have.” It’s infrastructure. If you want your cleantech company to be understood, trusted, and taken seriously at scale, you must produce video content. Not because everyone else is doing it. But because that’s where your audience already is.
