Aaron sits down with Dan Crawford, Senior Vice President at Echo Communications Advisors, a policy-first communications firm that works exclusively with climate and clean energy clients. Dan spends his days helping clean energy companies and nonprofits shape public narratives, place op-eds, and talk to policymakers in ways that actually move votes. He and Aaron dig into how energy prices became one of the hottest political issues in the country and how the solar industry can seize the moment. Listen to this episode here, or on: * YouTube * Apple Podcasts * Spotify You can connect with Dan on LinkedIn here. Expect to learn: * How the clean energy sector got outmaneuvered in Washington during the One Big Beautiful Bill fight * What clean energy companies can do right now to tell better stories, get local press, and bring elected officials into their projects. * Why facts alone do not speak for themselves, and how emotion, human stories, and pocketbook concerns drive modern energy politics. Quotes from the episode: “Energy prices are not going away as an issue. Voters see the increases on their bills and they are looking for someone to blame and someone to fix it.” - Dan Crawford “Clean energy has flipped from being something people supported for climate reasons to something most voters support because they want cheaper electricity.”- Dan Crawford Transcript Aaron NicholsHello, everyone, and welcome back to this week in solar. As always, I’m your host, Aaron Nichols, the research and policy specialist here at Exact Solar in Newtown, Pennsylvania.And today we have someone that I’ve followed for a little while. Once we got started talking on LinkedIn, I realized that I’ve been subscribed to the Echo Communications Newsletter for, I think, over a year, and until I got really excited to make that connection.We have Dan Crawford here, the Senior Vice President at Echo Communications Advisors. Dan, would you introduce yourself and echo and talk about what a day in your working life might look like? Dan CrawfordYeah, Aaron, it’s great to be on the pod. I started listening and we’ve been really enjoying the interview so far.Great to be chatting with you. So Echo Communications and advisors. We are a DC based policy first communications firm. We focus exclusively on climate and clean energy clients.So what I tell people is, you know, we help climate and clean energy companies, nonprofits, organizations have their voices heard in Washington and across the country.So if you’re looking to change policy, if you’re looking to fix a piece of legislation or get something past or input with lawmakers, you know, we help with communications tactics like media, op-eds, messaging to have your voice heard. Aaron NicholsOkay, great. And just off the top of my head, I’m really interested in landing op-eds. How, what’s a off the top of your head tip for anyone who’s interested in getting more? Dan CrawfordYou know, op ads are top. They’re easier said than done. Yeah. There’s a lot of people submitting a lot of op ads to not a lot outlets.I would say the first tip is know your audience. So, if you are trying to reach, you know, people in the specific area look for, you know, local or regional outlets, if you’re trying to reach people that are interested in a specific topic, you know, look at trade publications, look at kind of more niche websites, don’t assume that if you’re writing an op-ed, you have to pitch it to USA Today of New York Times, you know, they’re probably going to be outlets that are better read by your audiences.And if you kind of do your homework a little bit and find something that you think is a really good fit, you’re more likely to get it picked up.You know, having a clear message and a really unique point of view is really helpful. It can’t just be, you know, hey, here’s, you know, this thing that I think is cool, pay attention to me.You have to be making an argument, you have to be, you have to be saying something that it is unique to you that they’re not hearing from a bunch of other people.So make sure your argument is unique, make sure your audience, you have the right audience in mind, and make sure that your writing is solid and compelling. Aaron NicholsYeah, okay, those are all great tips. I mean, I’ve never thought about this until I just asked you that, but the average editor who’s publishing op-eds probably has to sort through just the craziest stuff you can imagine coming into their newspapers.So make yours easy quick and related. Dan CrawfordYeah, you have to imagine, you know, these folks are probably spending like two minutes for submission before they decide whether to accept it or reject it.So you have to make sure that you can grab their attention with something that’s very compelling. When they get go, that’s a unique argument that they haven’t heard before.And a point of view that is not represented in their newspaper or if they’re out there already. Aaron NicholsYeah, well, to take it in a different direction, one thing that I wanted to talk to you about and that we are very excited about at Exact Solar because we install Solar in New Jersey is Mikey Cheryl, winning the governorship of New Jersey. And we also had Abigail Spanberger win the governorship of Virginia and both talked a lot about using clean energy to bring down energy prices when they were on campaign trail.We also saw two new elected officials to the Georgia Public Service Commission who ran on very similar terms, which for that to make national news is crazy.A lot of people probably hadn’t even heard of public service commissions before the last couple of years. So do you think this will be a winning strategy for other candidates a year from now as we go through the midterms? Dan CrawfordYeah, I absolutely do, you know, 2025 elections were a big issue with energy prices across the board, and I don’t see any sign of that changing in the next year.Or if you look at New Jersey and electricity prices were up 20% year over year this summer and polls showed that a vast majority of voters considered it to be an important issue in the election.And Cheryl was really able to seize on that. She came out and announced that she was going to freeze rates, be executive order, and that she was going to fight to reform PJM, the grid operator in New Jersey.And, you know, she really kind of defined the debate over energy prices, and I think, you know, it was very smart and she ended up winning on the issue.You know, we were joking before we started recording. When was the last time a grid operator would say a household name, you know, in an election?So it’s clear that voters are paying attention. People have noticed that their electricity prices are going up, you know, in Virginia, data centers are a huge issue.There’s more data centers in Virginia than I think anywhere in the world, definitely anywhere in the country. And, you know, people see them as you’re driving by, you see these huge data centers, and you know that they’re just gobbling up tons of power.And there’s a big fight over whether there should be more of them and how they should pay for their power.And Spamberger was really able to see them on that as well. And then, of course, in Georgia, you had two Democrats winning in the public service commission, which is the first time that Democrats have won statewide non-federal election in Virginia or in Georgia in like 20 years or something like that.And, you know, these, these public service commissioners, gigs, like, usually if you’re, if you’re in an incumbent, you’re not really worried about a reelection challenge, people tend to just kind of like vote the same people in over and over again.So the fact that voters were fired up enough to even go to the polls for this election, let alone vote for a challenger shows that energy prices are going to be, you know, a huge issue.And I think what we’ve seen is really a flipping of the script with clean energy where, you know, clean energy, especially solar is oftentimes the cheapest form of energy that we put on the grid.It’s by far the fastest, and when you talk about supply constraints as data centers are demanding more power, you know, the fact that you can put solar panels up, the fact that you can get solar panels up and connect them to the grid in a couple of years compared to five, six, seven, eight years for a gas plan means that solar is by far the best option and so clean energy has kind of switched from being something that people backed because they cared about climate change, they backed because they care about the environment, to something that the majority of voters support because they want to see cheaper electricity.And I think that flipping of the script has been really interesting. And it I think is a great sign for the solar industry and for the clean energy industry in general going forward. Aaron NicholsYeah there’s so many places to go here and so many things that I’m curious about since you are in this every day and you know so much more than I do.But I am I’m particularly interested in the story that’s being told right now because I know that that Mikey Cheryl and Abigail Spanberger won, and there was this public service commission election as well.And the media has really seized on that, saying, like, energy is going to be a hot-button issue. But four people does seem like a small sample size to me.And so I’m interested in what you’ve seen in the broader picture as well. Dan CrawfordYeah, I mean, you know, 2025 is an off-year election and, you know, it’s not even a proper mid-term, so you really only have Virginia and New Jersey and then a couple of smaller state elections.So it’s a small sample size, but I don’t think this issue is going away. You’re already seeing Democrats talk about it, you know, who are sort of thinking about running for President in 2028.
