Big Oil pivots to get-out-the-vote ads
The American Petroleum Institute asks swing-state voters to “support energy independence and vote November 8th.”
Welcome to Climate Monitor, a weekly digest of the digital tactics and strategies polluters and climate-action groups use to shift public opinion and move legislation. We’ve examined political ad spending on social media platforms, as well as what’s trending on social media. Tell your colleagues to subscribe here!
TL;DR:
Diving right into election season, the American Petroleum Institute has launched GOTV ads asking swing-state voters to “support American energy independence and vote Nov. 8th,” capping a months-long email acquisition campaign.
LCV Action Fund, Climate Power Action, and Building Back Together have launched multiplatform digital ad campaigns supporting the Inflation Reduction Act and Democrats, all targeting young adults in key battleground states.
British think-tank InfluenceMap released an extensive study evaluating the mismatch between the biggest fossil fuel companies’ ad messaging on clean energy and their actual commitments to clean energy. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t add up.
On Facebook last week, right-wing pundits reveled in the irony of California asking residents to cut energy use just a week after announcing a 2035 ban on gas-powered cars. However, the California Public Utilities Commission’s huge digital public awareness campaign may well have helped avert massive blackouts during a record-breaking heatwave.
National Digital Ad Spending on Climate
Facebook + Instagram
Here are the top 25 spenders nationwide on climate and energy-related ads on Meta platforms from last week:
Last week, climate groups reached an all-year record in Meta ad spending - dropping a combined $550k - as NRDC and the League of Conservation Voters together spent nearly $150k on the platform, primarily promoting Democrats who supported the Inflation Reduction Act. However, those two groups appear to have halted these campaigns for now.
The primary climate groups running pro-IRA ads are now LCV Victory Fund and Climate Power Action, which spent $36k on the platform last week; read on for how much these two groups are spending on other digital platforms. Also launching new pro-IRA video ads is the pro-Biden group Building Back Together, which is highlighting how the bill will “lower costs on things like prescription drugs, health care, utility bills.” All three of these groups are targeting young adults with competitive U.S. House and Senate races in states including AZ, GA, MI, NV, NH, PA, VA, and WI.
The ads above qualify as what election folks like to call engagement and persuasion, i.e. exciting your base voters and bringing undecideds into your camp. But, now that Labor Day is behind us, some groups will start turning to the last piece of the midterms puzzle: mobilization, more commonly known as “get-out-the-vote.” The first climate group we’ve seen run these types of ads at this point in the cycle is Action for the Climate Emergency, which appears to have tested GOTV ads targeting folks under 35 in AZ, NC, OH, and PA last week.
That said, climate groups are not the only ones with a calendar, as the American Petroleum Institute is also running a digital mobilization campaign. All year long they’ve been running email acquisition ads targeting oil and gas workers and supporters, and it now looks like they’ve started putting the list they’ve built to use. They’re serving their custom list of fans ads urging them to “support energy independence and vote on Nov. 8th.” And, similar to the climate groups above, they’re targeting older voters in states AZ, GA, OH, PA, and WI.
Google + YouTube
LCV Victory Fund and Climate Power Action have joined NRDC in running YouTube ads supporting both incumbent and challenging Democrats in dozens of U.S. House and Senate races across the country. The groups’ 15-second ads highlight the current impacts of climate change before highlighting how these Democrats passed or support the largest climate bill ever.
Overall, here’s how much these groups spent on Google political ads last week:
Snapchat
LCV Action Fund has also spent over $10k so far on Snap ads supporting Sens. Mark Kelly and Raphael Warnock. Interestingly, these ads largely target young adults in the Atlanta and Phoenix areas by interest, such as electronic music and hip-hop, indie and foreign films, BET, Food Network, and soap operas. Overall, here’s how much groups have invested in the platform so far this year:
Climate & Energy Ads in the 2022 Elections
We identified several new digital ad campaigns about climate change and energy from battleground midterm campaigns across the country.
CO-Sen: Michael Bennet released an ad featuring himself talking in a solar panel field: “I’ve been fighting in the Senate to expand renewable energy–a key component of addressing the climate crisis. If Republicans flip my seat, they’ll have the majority they need to block any legislation addressing climate change.”
GA-Sen: Raphael Warnock launched a nerdy video ad featuring himself in a Georgia solar panel factory: “Georgia is home to America’s largest solar panel manufacturer. How much power is that? More than Marty needed to go back to the future! I’m Raphael Warnock and we’re making historic investments to fight climate change while helping create Georgia jobs.”
IL-14: Lauren Underwood launched a new ad touting the Inflation Reduction Act: “From extreme weather to flooding, our community is already experiencing the effects of climate change. I passed the Inflation Reduction Act, the single largest climate investment in our history per the EPA, to prevent the worst effects of climate change. Because climate change is not a future threat — it's an immediate one.”
IL-17: Republican Esther Joy King launched a new ad attacking the Inflation Reduction Act: “Inflation is hurting families and my opponent, climate activist Eric Sorenson, is supporting a spending deal that would make inflation worse and raise taxes on low- and middle-income Americans.”
Reaching Frontline Communities
We normally use this section of Climate Monitor to highlight digital ads targeting frontline communities to advocate for clean energy and climate action, but this week we found new ads seeking to do the opposite. The Grow Louisiana Coalition spent nearly $3k last week on Facebook ads targeting Louisianans aged 35 and up that call on the Biden administration to allow oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico. The ads claim that “oil and gas are our way of life here in Louisiana,” and ironically argue that “offshore leases fund coastal restoration.” The ads also echo Big Oil’s rhetoric connecting fossil fuel production to global security.
What’s trending organically?
Last week, the top Facebook post mentioning climate change, energy, or related terms came from the right-wing meme page Common Sense, which plagiarized a pervasive and misleading post that claims that road maintenance won’t be possible if electric vehicles make the gas tax obsolete.
We suspect that that particular meme got extraordinary reach because of recent electric vehicle news out of California. Late last month, the state announced that it would ban gas-powered vehicles by 2035, but last week, California’s grid management agency asked residents to avoid charging their electric vehicles during peak hours. The agency made the ask in anticipation of this week’s crushing heat wave, but conservative pundits online exploited it to own the libs. The irony of the back-to-back news in California was apparently quite compelling, as half of the top 10 posts that mentioned climate or clean energy last week came from pages including Dan Crenshaw, Newsmax, Breitbart, and MRCTV. We estimate that this narrative got at least 506k interactions on posts from a dozen right-wing pages.
(As an aside, we’ll note that on top of sending out push notifications, emails, and texts announcing the Flex Alert, the California Public Utilities Commission spent nearly $750k on Meta ads in five languages promoting the alert. Despite the right-wing hand-wringing, the commission’s campaign appears to be helping the Golden State avoid the worst.)
Overall, here’s how the most engaged content on Facebook breaks down:
Despite the best efforts of Dan Crenshaw and PragerU, the news out of California wasn’t nearly as viral on Instagram as the climate catastrophe unfolding in Pakistan. The crisis was elevated on the platform largely because of model Bella Hadid, who made a post urging her followers to donate to UNICEF to assist their aid efforts, getting 2.11 million video views and 674k interactions. Jane Fonda’s announcement of her cancer diagnosis, in which she reaffirmed her commitment to organize for climate action, also got significant engagement.
Overall, here’s how the most engaged content on Instagram mentioning climate, energy, and related terms breaks down:
That’s it for Climate Monitor this week. As always, if you have any comments or questions, feel free to drop us a line by shooting an email to nick@fwiwmedia.com.