Fossil fuel companies, trade groups use digital ads to stoke fears about inflation
Climate groups shrinking their digital ad budgets during final stretch of Build Back Better push
Welcome to Climate Monitor, your weekly digest of the digital tactics and strategies that polluters and climate-action groups are deploying online to shift public opinion and move legislation. We’ve examined political ad spending on platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, and Google by several dozen groups and corporations from the past week, as well as their activities on social media. Tell your colleagues to subscribe here!
What we found:
The League of Conservation Voters was one of the only climate groups putting out new Facebook ads supporting the Build Back Better Act last week.
Joining ExxonMobil, the Empowerment Alliance and American Petroleum Institute are using Facebook ads to stoke inflationary fears around the price of gas and energy.
BP launched new greenwashing ads, as did BASF and the Propane Education and Research Council.
The conversation around climate change on Facebook and Instagram was dominated by remarks from former President Barack Obama at COP26. On Twitter, tweets criticizing the insufficient progress at the conference gained more traction.
While Democratic candidates are still using the promise of climate action to fundraise with Facebook ads, Republican candidates are starting to lean more into gas and energy prices.
National Digital Ad Spending on Climate
Here are the top 25 spenders nationwide on climate and energy-related ads on Facebook from last week:
As far as we can tell, almost all climate groups scaled down their Facebook ad campaigns last week, especially Climate Power, whose spending on the platform decreased by 81 percent from $109,044 the previous week to just $20,332 last week to focus entirely on email acquisition around passing the Build Back Better Act. The Green New Deal Network has also stopped running Facebook ads as of this writing. Most other groups, including the Environmental Defense Fund, Greenpeace, and NRDC held their spending relatively steady with fundraising ads.
Among the few groups still using Facebook political ads for public pressure include the League of Conservation Voters, which has so far spent around $10k on ads pressuring Reps. Kurt Schrader, Kathleen Rice, Ed Case, and Jared Golden to stick to their word and pass BBBA this week. We also noticed that the National Audubon Society Action Fund launched a Facebook ad campaign pressuring lawmakers to “vote YES on investing in innovative clean energy solutions.” Their targets include 15 Democratic and Republican House members and Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. FWIW, LCV’s ads are mostly targeted at young adults, while Audubon Action’s are mostly targeted at older women.
While many climate groups are keeping their Facebook ad spending on the relatively low side, some polluters and their allies are starting a new push on the platform to try to derail most action by the federal government. ExxonMobil was one of the biggest spenders overall on the platform last week as it continues to funnel money into anti-tax ads, while outside groups including the American Petroleum Institute and the Empowerment Alliance appear to be tapping into the inflationary fears with their new ads.
Other polluting advertisers, including BASF, BP America, and the Propane Education & Research Council are using Facebook ads to present their companies and products as environmentally friendly. BASF, the largest chemical producer in the world, spent over $20k last week claiming that they’re “making battery materials for electric vehicles even more sustainable”; BP spent over $67k on greenwashing ads highlight how a new law in Washington that is forcing them to reduce one plant’s emissions, claiming they “advocated for the Climate Commitment Act in WA”; and Propane spent a record $57k on nationwide ads claiming that the gas is “an environmentally friendly alternative energy that helps you reduce carbon emissions.”
Additionally, here’s how much major groups have spent week-to-week on Facebook ads related to climate, conservation, and energy.
We found that just four groups ran pro-climate ads on YouTube or Google last week: the Nature Conservancy, LCV, NC WARN, and Third Way. The biggest of these investors was Nature Conservancy, which spent $8,600 on banner ads continuing to pressure a handful of Democrats to “support climate action,” while LCV spent just $4,600 on a few YouTube ads supporting Sens. Patty Murray, Mark Kelly, Maggie Hassan, and Catherine Cortez Masto. NC Warn also spent $4,600 on one new YouTube ad and several other banner ads urging Gov. Roy Cooper to oppose Dominion expanding its fracking operations while Third Way spent $4,100 on YouTube ads supporting Reps. Lucy McBath and Cindy Axne.
There were no new climate, conservation, or clean energy-related political ads on Snapchat last week, but here’s how much the biggest spenders have invested in the platform so far this year:
Climate, clean energy, and conservation ads in next year’s key states
We picked up a few new Facebook ads mentioning climate change, conservation, and/or energy in some of the biggest races Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
GA-SEN: Gary Black started running a fundraising video ad citing the price of gas: “We’re about to hit the campaign trail...Georgia is a big state. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover...and it takes resources, especially with the price of gas now thanks to Joe Biden.”
NC-SEN: Ted Budd also started running an ad this week about gas prices: “Necessities like groceries and gas cost exponentially more because of Joe Biden's terrible economic policies. No wonder his approval ratings are below 40% - the average American isn't going to put up with this.”
OH-SEN: Tim Ryan has been running fundraising ads since Nov. 6 with climate action as a major plank: “We’re in a CRITICAL moment right now. 🚨 We can overcome the problems left by the pandemic, tackle the climate crisis, and help working families but we have to EXPAND the Senate majority to do any of that.”
PA-SEN: John Fetterman has spent at least $6k so far on a fundraising ad with climate action at the end of a long list of priorities: “ John stands firm in his beliefs — just the way he always has. He's proud to be fighting for legal weed ✅, universal health care, LGBTQIA+ protection under law 🌈, the union way of life, second chances 🙏, racial justice, ending COVID 😷, raising the minimum wage, and beating climate change.”
Reaching Frontline Communities
The Nature Conservancy this week started running a few Spanish-language video ads on Facebook and Instagram targeting young adults nationwide that either educate users on the carbon cycle while emphasizing the importance of working with nature, or advocating for carbon markets. While these ads were part of a larger bilingual campaign, we estimate that the Nature Conservancy has spent around $7k on these Spanish ads so far.
We also found that Sierra Club is running Spanish-language Facebook ads in California, but they’re specifically campaigning against the California Public Utilities Commission, claiming in their bilingual ad campaign that “The California Public Utilities Commission is about to sink more money into expanding California’s gas plants and paying people to run diesel backup generators. These are not climate solutions--this will only make climate change worse!” We estimate that Sierra Club has invested around $2k on these Spanish ads.
We should also note here that the CPUC has been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on Facebook ads all year (nearly $4 million since June) in a wide variety of languages under a page called Energy Upgrade California. Their ads promote ways consumers can reduce their carbon footprints by adopting clean energy sources or modifying their electricity usage.
Finally, we think our readers may be interested in a story published in FiveThirtyEight today that discusses how last century’s segregation still influences how Americans experience the environment, and further, how Americans think about how other Americans experience it. Check it out!
Measuring the National Organic Conversation
The top 3 performing posts mentioning climate or energy issues on Facebook last week came from Barack Obama (134.5k interactions), Barack Obama (92.3k interactions), and Newsmax (82k interactions).
Former President Barack Obama’s presence at COP26 generated a significant amount of engagement around climate change and the international summit itself. Not only did a good few of the top Facebook and Instagram posts about climate come from the previous president, but several other highly-engaged Facebook posts and news articles also referenced some of his remarks. Right-wing and mainstream media alike latched onto his criticisms of former President Donald Trump’s anti-climate actions; we estimate that these articles, coming from outlets including Newsmax, NBC News, Forbes, Breitbart, Axios, generated at least 65.9k interactions.
Overall, the top three Instagram posts about climate change and related terms came from Barack Obama (405.3k interactions), Barack Obama (372.8k interactions), and Mark Ruffalo (225.9k interactions). Other highly-engaged Instagram posts that mentioned climate change highlighted the natural impacts of human activity: mounds of discarded clothes in Chile (77k interactions); a precarious revival of life in the River Thames (53.8k interactions); threatened polar bears in northern Manitoba, Canada (50.8k interactions); and Tuvalu’s foreign minister delivering a speech at COP26 while knee-deep in tidewater (41.3k interactions).
Finally, here were the top three tweets mentioning climate and related terms last week. All of them are sharply critical of the kind of withering excuses and mediocre climate action commitments from the world’s nations. Two other highly engaged tweets came from Greta Thunberg, who advocated for raising the declared global threat level of climate change and for democracy itself.
That’s it for Climate Monitor this week. As always, head to climatemonitor.substack.com to see these updates in real time as we publish them throughout the week!
And if you have any comments or questions, feel free to drop us a line by shooting an email to nick@fwiwmedia.com.