White House roadshow hypes clean energy boom on social media
A roundup of the climate conversation across social media this week
Welcome to Climate Monitor, a weekly, data-driven report on the digital strategies polluters and pro-Climate groups are using to shift public opinion and move legislation. Here’s what we found:
Toplines:
12 out of the top 15 Facebook posts mentioning climate or energy issues last week came from the White House’s “Investing in America” tour where high-level officials are traveling to promote the admin’s investments in manufacturing, jobs, and clean energy
Amid reports that the federal government is nearing a proposal to force western states to split water rights evenly, the California Dep of Water Resources is running Facebook ads urging residents to conserve water
The Years Project is taking on Citibank’s financing of fossil fuel development in a new wave of Facebook ads
Several posts about Swedish road surfaces that could charge electric vehicles received lots of likes + shares on Instagram last week
New separate polling from the AP and Gallup shows that advocates and carmakers alike have a long way to go to persuade Americans on electric vehicles
Digital Advertising Roundup
Facebook + Instagram 👍
For starters, here were the top 25 climate and energy-related advertisers on Facebook and Instagram last week:
Yale Climate Connections continued to spend heavily on Facebook and Instagram advertising last week. As a result, they were the top spender on climate & energy-related issues. We’ve previously highlighted the group’s anti-misinformation ad campaign, which you can see here >>
In New York, the New York League of Conservation Voters launched a new ad campaign focused on “decarbonizing” New York and getting state-owned facilities to zero on-site emissions.
All the way across the country in California, the California Dep. of Water Resources is running ads through a Facebook page called Save Our Water, urging residents to conserve water at all costs. The campaign comes as the federal government is considering making the state split future water rights evenly with several other states and reduce its current usage of the Colorado River.
Our friends at The Years Project launched a new campaign last week too, educating users and hammering Citibank for its past financing of fossil fuel projects.
Lastly, there was one new and notable industry advertiser last week: the American Exploration & Production Council. While the group’s name definitely sounds like a villain from Avatar 3, they’re running pretty basic video ads asking Facebook users to call their member of Congress and support “unleashing American-made energy” (aka fossil fuels).
Google & YouTube 🎞️
The climate or energy-related political advertisers on Google that were archived last week included: the League of Conservation Voters ($6,800), Growth Energy ($4,300), Virginia LCV ($2,800), CA Energy & Infrastructure Trust ($2,600), and Action for the Climate Emergency ($1,800).
ACE’s latest campaign aims to put pressure on President Biden to halt LNG (aka liquified natural gas) exports, and targets Americans in ~18 states.
Snapchat 🤳
There were no new climate or energy-related spenders on Snapchat last week.
What’s Trending on Social Media
How are climate and energy issues being discussed by Americans on social media? Every week, we conduct a robust keyword search using CrowdTangle for general terms like “climate change,” “global warming,” “fossil fuels,” and over 40 more specific topics (like “electric vehicles,” “gas stoves” and “pipelines”). Here were the 15 top-performing public posts (by # of interactions) related to climate and energy on Facebook last week:
Last week, over 11,800 public posts on Facebook mentioned climate or energy issues, and they earned a cumulative 716,000 interactions.
Believe it or not, 12 out of the top 15 posts mentioning climate or energy issues came from the White House’s “Investing in America” tour - where the President, VP, and other high-level officials travel to cities around the country to promote the admin’s investments in manufacturing, jobs, and clean energy.
The official President Joe Biden, White House, and Vice President Kamala Harris pages repeatedly pushed clean energy & pro-climate messaging last week, and it paid off. In most of the posts, they make a clear and obvious point to couple any mention of “clean energy” with politically-popular staples of “manufacturing,” and “private sector job creation.”
Among right-wing or anti-climate posts, this one from PragerU received the most engagement – a snarky text post asserting that electric cars are powered by fossil fuels.
Meanwhile, here were the top-performing feed posts (excluding Reels and Stories) related to climate and energy on Instagram last week:
Last week, over 5,600 public feed posts on Instagram mentioned climate or energy issues, and they earned a cumulative 6.6 million interactions. Similar to Facebook, pro-climate posts and messaging received far more engagement than others.
Among the most popular posts were these two from @wealth and @hoest featuring Swedish roads that would charge electric vehicles.
On the far Right, a post attacking Taylor Swift (!) for her private jet use received moderate levels of engagement. A reminder: one of the most commonly-used attacks from conservative media or climate deniers is pointing out liberal hypocrisy around private jet use.
Testing Spotlight: New EV Polling
According to a new poll by the Associated Press, Americans remain reluctant to buy electric vehicles. Only 4 out of 10 respondents said they were “at least somewhat likely to switch” to an EV on their next car purchase, which was mostly due to two serious concerns: the current high price tag and the availability of charging stations.
Another poll by Gallup this week also underlined Americans' concerns with EVs. While about four in 10 U.S. adults think using EVs helps address climate change “a great deal” (12%) or “a fair amount” (27%), roughly six in 10 believe it helps “only a little” (35%) or “not at all” (26%).
Weekly Reading
Want to go deeper? Here’s a quick roundup of news from the past week at the intersection of climate, digital strategy, and advocacy.
P.S. Are you signed up for Climate Nexus’ daily newsletter, Hot News? It’s a one-stop shop for everything you need to know in the climate and environmental policy space. Subscribe here>>
‘Propaganda to infect children’s minds’: Climate misinformation textbook mailed to 8,000 US science teachers (Independent, 4/6)
A recent poll reveals how tough it is to get an accurate read on public opinion about climate policy. (Heated, 4/3)
Right-wing media use misinformation around 15-minute cities to pivot toward climate change denial (Media Matters, 4/12)
That’s it for this week! If you enjoyed reading this week’s issue, feel free to forward it to a friend or colleague.
Climate Monitor is a product of the Digital Climate Coalition + FWIW Media. Tips/comments/questions? Email kyle@fwiwmedia.com