AI may dominate business conversations worldwide, but it didn’t dominate panels or news coverage at Climate Week, the largest gathering of companies and people tackling the climate crisis, or RE+, the solar industry’s largest trade show. AI was barely mentioned at either event.
Instead, what industry leaders and reporters spoke with us about was the importance of building connections, the need for increased climate financing, clarifying the language we use by removing green jargon, the need for talent, and transitioning to clean energy.
You can spot the trend in what was discussed — and what wasn’t. At Climate Week and RE+, we observed an industry looking for solutions to human problems, not artificial ones. As companies come to terms with the energy transition, they’re bringing the conversation back to basics, and that’s where we can help.
To guide your energy, sustainability, or climate communications strategy through 2024 and into 2025, we compiled Highwire’s on-the-ground insights from Climate Week and RE+ below.
1. Building connectionsMultiple panelists agreed: The key to climate success is building connections everywhere. Almost every panelist we heard from at Climate Week — activist Malala Yousafzai, IKEA’s Shideh Hashemi, Walmart’s Aman Singh, COP29’s Nigar Arpadaraithe, and more — emphasized the importance of engaging deeply with local and indigenous communities, non-governmental organizations, youth leaders, policy leaders, and with others, even across industries. Only through collaboration with various stakeholders can we address circularity, embed sustainability throughout a business, and create policy that doesn’t leave anyone behind.
Collaboration rarely leads in news stories, though, unless you’re announcing a partnership with massive names, have something really unique to showcase, or have made an outsized impact through your collaboration.
2. Financing the solutionsThroughout multiple conversations and presentations, people wanted to know how to finance climate solutions. There were plenty of ideas for addressing climate change: boot camps to upskill workers, utilizing geothermal power to reuse natural gas infrastructure, recycling batteries to limit the mining of virgin materials, or exerting market pressures. What we didn’t see, however, was a consensus on how to secure the trillions of funding needed to implement these ideas.
HSBC, for example, is partnering with Walmart to help relieve pressure on the latter’s supply chain partners that are trying to meet new climate goals. But not every company can replicate the work of the Fortune 1. Similarly, Alix Peterson Zwane, former CEO of the Global Innovation Fund, discussed how not every country has the resources needed to achieve net zero without limiting economic development.
We heard one solution, which brought us back to building connections and embedding sustainability into everything a company does. Instead of relying on a single department — the sustainability team — to implement climate solutions, multiple departments can contribute to a company’s sustainability goals. Just make sure that when you’re communicating about your sustainability strategy, you have an internal comms plan to help get everyone onboard with and working toward your company’s climate goals.
3. Clarifying our languageClear. Understandable. Specific. That‘s how we should be defining our sustainability goals. Instead, companies use a litany of jargon in their corporate sustainability work. Speed & Scale’s Anjali Grover emphasized this during a Solutions House panel, reciting a list of green jargon:
- Carbon Free
- Carbon Negative
- Carbon Neutral
- Carbon Positive
- Net Neutrality
- Net Zero Carbon
- Real Zero Reduction
The list went on.
Author of Climate Capitalism and Bloomberg News' Akshat Rathi added that sorting through companies’ sustainability reports "gives [him] a headache."
Companies like retailers Patagonia and Eileen Fisher, known for being purpose-driven organizations, are cognizant of this disconnect between what a company wants to say and how it chooses to say it. The language they use can be very different from the language other companies use.
For example, during an Axios House conversation led by Hope King, Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert emphasized that Patagonia is a responsible company, not a sustainable one: "Everything we make takes something from the planet we can’t give back."
Keep an eye out for whether your sustainability goals are communicated clearly, or if you’re a culprit of green jargon. Axios’ Eleanor Hawkins goes deeper into these takeaways and others in her newsletter on sustainability, released during Climate Week.
4. Finding the workforceBy 2050, there will be twice as many jobs requiring green skills as people qualified to fill these positions, according to a LinkedIn report released ahead of Climate Week. This green skills gap is not going away and will require upskilling and reskilling across the board.
Cristina Contreras Casado of The American Society of Mechanical Engineers noted that, historically, companies were focused on asking, “Where can we find the money to change the way we do things?” Today, she said they need to be asking, “Where can we find the people?”
Numerous reporters shared that they were surprised by how often the workforce challenge came up in their discussions. We expect them to continue digging into this talent gap.
5. Transitioning to clean energyChallenges around securing carbon-free energy snuck into almost every conversation.
At Climate Week, panelists from the Fortune 500 either brought it up naturally or were asked about it. Google, Meta, and others were already struggling to transition to carbon-free energy, and now it’s even more difficult because of the surge in AI. Microsoft made a splash when it announced, right before Climate Week, a deal with Constellation Energy to revive a closed reactor at nuclear facility Three Mile Island — specifically to power its AI needs.
Yet panelists, especially those at RE+, focused heavily on solutions to the energy transition, including: speeding up interconnections, expanding manufacturing for transformers and other grid technology, and doubling down on the success of VPPs.
Out of all the big topics we noted at both events, we observed a lot of money, resources and reporters focused on the energy transition. The coolest event we went to was focused on geothermal energy. The Geothermal House had its own theme song. Listen to it here.
Breaking through at Climate Week
With so much happening at Climate Week, it can be hard to break through the noise. To succeed with media during Climate Week, try to participate in one of the many events held by publications like Axios, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Newsweek, Semafor, or others. Most of the major news outlets hold their own events — and cover them. Those publications dedicated numerous newsletters or stories to their own conversations.
If you’re not participating in one of those panels, release your news ahead of Climate Week. Axios’ Andrew Freedman emphasized that this was a smart strategy. Too many reports are launched during Climate Week for him or any publication to feasibly cover. News like the reactivation of Three Mile Island, which might have seemed a perfect fit for Climate Week, made a splash right before.
While Climate Week is a moment where many reporters gather, the opportunity for telling your energy and sustainability story is year round. We heard some newsrooms are asking reporters to expand from just reporting on energy or utilities to cover clean tech, and others are building up their daily reporting in the space. Take advantage of this opportunity, and use Climate Week to build on the successes you achieve before the event.
Don’t hesitate to reach out to Highwire to discuss your communications strategy around energy or sustainability, or brainstorm solutions to challenges you’re facing. We’d love to hear directly from you.
To learn more about our insights from Climate Week and RE+, join Highwire for a conversation with sustainability leaders at Bread Financial, Pinterest, and Pure Storage, moderated by Talib Visram, award-winning journalist previously at Fast Company, Inc and CNN, on Thursday, Nov. 14. Register today.
Contributions by Sabrina Morse and Andrew Caldwell.