In this episode of Climate Positive, Guy Van Syckle and Gil Jenkins sit down with Caroline Spears, Executive Director of Climate Cabinet, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting clean energy and climate policy leaders at state and local levels. These often-forgotten races are sometimes decided by a couple hundred votes and can also decide the fate of billions of dollars of decarbonization investment. Caroline explains how Climate Cabinet strategically identifies target candidates through data science and political expertise, aiming to elect climate champions with the highest potential ability to shape positive change. Through real-world examples, she demonstrates the organization's effectiveness in close political races and the tangible difference their support can make.
In this episode of Climate Positive, Guy Van Syckle and Gil Jenkins sit down with Caroline Spears, Executive Director of Climate Cabinet, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting clean energy and climate policy leaders at state and local levels. These often-forgotten races are sometimes decided by a couple hundred votes and can also decide the fate of billions of dollars of decarbonization investment. Caroline explains how Climate Cabinet strategically identifies target candidates through data science and political expertise, aiming to elect climate champions with the highest potential ability to shape positive change. Through real-world examples, she demonstrates the organization's effectiveness in close political races and the tangible difference their support can make.
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Episode recorded on October 2, 2025
Chad: I am Chad Reed.
Hilary: I'm Hilary Langer.
Gil: I'm Gil Jenkins.
Guy: I'm Guy Van Syckle.
Chad: And this is Climate Positive.
Caroline: The playbook here is kind of on the table. And so we know how the American Gas Association invests in building political power. We know how the American Petroleum Institute invests in building political power, and that does give a roadmap for where the clean energy industry really needs to step up.
Guy: In this episode, Caroline Spears talks through the founding and impressive impact of Climate Cabinet, a non-profit dedicated to supporting clean energy and climate policy leaders at state and local levels. These often-forgotten races are sometimes decided by a couple hundred votes and can also decide the fate of billions of dollars of decarbonization investment. Caroline explains how Climate Cabinet strategically identifies target candidates through data science and political expertise, aiming to elect climate champions with the highest potential ability to shape positive change. From real world examples, she demonstrates the organization’s effectiveness in close political races and the tangible difference their support can make.
Guy: Well, Caroline, thank you so much for joining us today. At a high level, it'd be great to talk about your transition into Climate Cabinet. What prompted your. Shift, it looks like early in the stage in career, working on the project finance side, deepening the Excel trenches. Love to see that as a fellow finance person. But yeah, curious, kind of the big shift from there into working on policy and scaling solutions there.
Caroline: Thanks for having me. Excited to be here and talk about policy solutions in this particular moment, which feels interesting since H.R. 1 and the IRA fights of the spring. I started Climate Cabinet out of working in solar project finance. I was a financial analyst and you said, deep in the Microsoft Excel trenches and I was analyzing. Around five gigawatts of projects that the company wanted to build over the next five years.
That was my job. And I noticed something a little strange about the projects that we were building, which is we were building over 60 projects in the state of Massachusetts and none in the state of Arizona. you don't have to be a climate scientist and understand that Arizona's really hot and sunny and that's messed up.
That's backwards. And when you dig into it, it's really the decisions made by state and local policy makers that are driving that transition in Massachusetts and holding that transition back in the state of Arizona. And that's what got me interested in the policy and political side of things. ’cause I was looking at these projects and they were being built or being killed for a variety of reasons.
I was really interested in the times when they were being built and killed by policymakers and by policies that didn't really serve anyone. And so that's when I started Climate Cabinet. I started investigating these under the radar policymakers that were having an outsized impact on our ability to actually build and deploy solar.
Guy: Love it. And in terms of the initial events or particular conversations that. Pushed you in that direction to jump in. Obviously you saw the dynamics in between different state deployments, but was there a moment where you're like, wow, I need to do this?
Caroline: Oh, there were a few things. I think definitely seeing our Massachusetts pipeline compared to the Arizona pipeline was a big light switch on at the same time of debate in the Texas legislature, which has since repeated every two years in the Texas legislature about clean energy because. Texas, the interconnection queue is so full of solar and storage projects, so full of clean energy projects, and there was this effort while I was there to do all sorts of crazy things with the sole intention of knocking those projects out of the interconnection queue and making them not viable, not financially viable.
This was all going through a intense kind of political process in the Texas state legislature, and when I was asked to analyze the impact of some of the proposed legislation. On our projects, that result was clear. It would kill off most of our pipeline in the state of Texas and ERCOT. And that's really when I said, you know what?
I think it is. Worth my time to just try this out, right? I don't know if anyone listening has ever started a company. You started a business, you know, you don't know that it's all gonna work when you start it, but I said I'm gonna take six months. I'm going to build out a tech stack that finds these offices across the country, not just in Texas, and I'm going to build out a program that helps climate champions running for these districts win.
’cause we need more clean energy champions in office. We need more climate champions in office broadly. And that's when I decided to quit and start Climate Cabinet. And it took a while. For six months, I didn't raise any funding. Someone initially said, Hey, I have 50,000. If you find somebody else who has 50,000, I'll unlock it.
And boy did it take me six months. I actually ended up running out of money. Starting to look for other jobs. I accepted a new job and then three days into that got announced that I actually triple matched that first piece of funding. So this is a total grind for six months. A lot of work. But it ended up working out and here we are.
That was six years ago. Our first budget was about $6,000 and we've doubled our budget almost every year since then. And now we have a team of 25 people across 10 states working on this project across the country.
Gil: So breakdown Climate Cabinet from 2020 through today. It's a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and that's how it started.
But you've since evolved to the other IRS designations that allow you to do more political advocacy. Could you talk about the different arms of Climate Cabinet?
Caroline: Yeah, and I'll frame this in terms of if anyone is listening to this and says, how do I get more involved and help building the political engine that we need to power the clean energy economy, this is relevant for you.
We at Climate Cabinet have always known that. Politicians pass policies and politicians do politics, right? And so you have to have something like a PAC. You have to be involved. That's what a political organization does. That's kind of the legal designation. So we've known that from the beginning and kind of plan that from the beginning.
IRS wise, there's a lot of complex jargon around what you can and can't do with different entities, but from the very beginning it was clear that politicians do politics. That's obvious to everybody listening. And so if we wanna support folks who are great on clean energy and great on climate, that's what we have to do.
Gil: Yeah. It means financially as well. Absolutely. And it's interesting you say that because from the philanthropic community, there's always nonprofits that are starting for education and to influence policy, but what I admire about what you've built is that you do sort of the education piece of course, but also the real political advocacy and spending side, which is part of how our system works. And it showed a level of sophistication then and now and applaud what you're doing.
Caroline: Yeah. if you're a climate champion and you wanna win in November of 2026, you are already running, you've probably announced, and you have to hire a campaign staff.
You have to have a field plan. You have to have a digital plan. You have to have a plan to reach voters. We run into this a lot, especially at our public service commission, especially at those which are elected in multiple states across the country. We run into a problem where voters just simply don't know what this office is.
The Arizona Corporation Commission is a pretty random sounding office, and a lot of people are just simply skipping that level of the ballot ’cause they have no idea who's running. And so if we have someone who's great on climate running for that office, great on clean energy running for that office.
They need support in order to hire campaign staff in order to go knock doors to talk to voters. Our best candidates, our best policy makers, they're ones who are actually out in their community talking to voters as much as possible and being really responsive to those voters and their needs. They need our support to get that done.
And that's where Climate Cabinet comes in, especially as we're looking at what happened with the IRA, kind of where we ended up there, that central thesis. How do we get climate champions out in front of voters and make sure voters know that they're lowering bills? Because solar and storage are now the cheapest forms of electricity that we have on the grid.
We need to help them spread their message. That's our goal for 2026, is to make sure that they can get in front of people and that they can continue investing in the democracy that we have built.
Guy: In terms of that messaging and what you're seeing out there, obviously narratives have shifted on the federal level.
I'm curious how that's flowing through on the state and local level in terms stories that are resonating for our climate champions and how you see that evolving over the next 3, 6, 12, 24 months.
Caroline: Yeah, I think. The best candidates in 26 are ones constantly talking to people in their district and kind of voicing those concerns.
I think electricity prices are going up. They're spiking right now. We just saw in Pennsylvania, the governors of PJM kind of gathered. It's pretty unprecedented for governors to think about PJM. Yeah, much less. Host an entire convening.
Gil: Right. And threatened to leave it.
Caroline: Yeah. Yeah. We're in some unprecedented times in terms of electricity.
Prices spiking, they're up. Insurance rates are up because of climate disasters. Anywhere from 10 to 30%, sometimes 40% year on year, depending on which state you live in. The cost of owning a home is up, the cost of transportation is up, and so. If we can come with solutions to that and we can support candidates who have real solutions to that help get their message out in front of voters, that's a place where we'll win.
Gil: And how many candidates are Climate Cabinet endorsed for? 26 thus far. Could you talk about the scale of vetting and identifying how many?
Caroline: Yeah. At Climate Cabinet, we go through a pretty intensive process vetting and choosing our candidates every year.
So in 2026, we'll be supporting a hundred candidates across the country. In 2025, this year we're supporting 50 and early voting has already started. Now when we're recording this, it's a couple weeks before the November, 2025 election, and so we have 50 candidates up this November and we'll have a hundred candidates up.
Next November and we go through, an intensive vetting process to make sure that they are really candidates who have outsized impact on our ability to build the clean energy future and then solve climate change. And that's what we call our approach Moneyball. We use a little data science, we use a little on the ground political knowledge and political knowhow.
And we put those two things together and that finds under the radar folks across the country who have outsized impact.
Guy: Wow. No, that's certainly impressive on the database. And can you remind folks, the role top of funnel in terms of number of state, local politicians, these various positions out there that would be filtered through to think about who those climate champions are and who you might ultimately want support for maximum impact?
Caroline: Yes. America elects an astonishing number of people to public office. Every cycle — it’s about 500,000.
Caroline: So this becomes a data science problem real fast.
Caroline: That's why, right? And that's the sheer number of people who run for public office every cycle. And so what our team does is we sort through.
Tens of thousands of those offices with two criteria. We look at political window and we look at climate or clean energy impact. So political window says, can we win? Do we think there's a, a pathway to victory? And then climate impact says, is it worth it? Do we actually get an outsized impact on clean energy or climate from this office?
And the data science piece is huge because the American Gas Association supports candidates across the country. The American Petroleum Institute floods state capitals with lobbyists. And so data science is a big way where we can really leverage the knowledge that we have to go faster and go further more efficiently, especially when we're dealing with existing industry trade groups that have been doing this for years.
And it's time for the clean energy industry to. Jump on in here and state capitol's in a bigger way.
Gil: Well resourced, and I don't know when you came up with this, and whether you have to be a baseball fan to understand this analogy, I think you do, or just a film fan. But this approach to data science, the analogy is Moneyball for climate politics on the famous film about the Oakland Athletics and Billy Bean has played by Brad Pitt.
I think that's such an excellent frame, but expand on that a bit.
Caroline: I think that metaphor certainly works, and the other way I think about it really is in terms of where are leverage points and how we have the most impact. And every year and every, every cycle. We all know that the US Senate is important. No one's here on this podcast arguing that the United States Senate is not an important body for passing policy in this country, and you can think about them as like the Major League Baseball Allstar.
Maybe that's the Allstar game. The other thing is that it's really expensive and really crowded space, and so. What the Moneyball frame is about, is about saying there are actually champions across the country who are doing fantastic work, and they're never gonna be on CNN. They're never gonna be the headliner at any big event.
People don't know who they are, but they're in the trenches every day getting real work done. When it comes to solar siting, when it comes to building transmission lines, when it comes to battery procurement. Passing clean energy standards that expand markets for clean energy companies. That's what they're doing every day and no one's really heard of them and they're doing a, a great job.
And that provides a opportunity for us to find folks who are in those trenches and say, Hey, what do you need to be successful? How can we help you go further with the work you're already doing?
Guy: And Caroline, in terms of working through that pool of 500,000 politicians across this country to hone down on the places where you can have the highest impact.
Can you just give us an example of over the past couple years, a candidate or race that was flagged to that system that might have been a little bit under the radar that turned out to be particularly meaningful
Caroline: Yeah, the great example here is Virginia, because the Virginia State elections are up in just a few weeks, and so the example that really comes to mind is Lily Franklin, who's a great candidate running in Virginia.
Lily Franklin ran in 2023 and she was not on most people's radar because the district was really strange. It was moving really fast and the way a traditional. Political decision gets made as well. Who holds the district? Oh, they've been in there for 10 years, 15 years. There's sometimes these heuristics, very much like the Moneyball movie.
Sometimes there's heuristics used that aren't data backed, and we've looked at that race in 2023 and we said, huh. I get that this district has been tough historically, but it's moving really rapidly and we think this is a place where we think it's a two point race essentially. So we got in, we invested, and Lily Franklin is fantastic on climate.
And you know what? She lost that race by two points. Lily Franklin is running again. She's up for election in just a couple weeks, and here's what we get if she wins. So she was a co-author on the Virginia Clean Economy Act.
Caroline: That's the type of person we need winning elections. So that was a big bet that we took.
And people said that district was 10 points behind. They said it's not even on the radar. At the very last minute, people started being like, is there something else going on here? And that's what our data science does, is identify places where. It's not immediately obvious. It doesn't get through the traditional political way of deciding which races are important, but data science can show you that there are more opportunities there.
And so for Lily, she went from 2023 to being the top candidate this year. So top candidate this year, fantastic on clean energy, and she is running a great race and voting has already started in her district.
Gil: And the margins in Virginia are so close, right
Caroline: just an incredibly tight race. Yeah. And that's stuff we do. another example from last year as we got involved in this primary in Minnesota where this new climate champion was taking on a, a classic Politico in Minnesota and she runs this primary, people don't think Holda hilt is gonna win.
And then primary night. It comes down to 47 votes. Wow. And she flips that seat. 40 and that was the difference. You say
Guy: 47 votes.
Caroline: 47 votes crazy. Why? And that race was the difference between getting someone who was, climate was not a top priority for them. They were like, I don't really know what this issue is.
Versus somebody who understands clean energy, understands climate, and is, excited to see how that can benefit her community. So two points, 47 votes. So many of our races end up that close and that tight.
Guy: Amazing. Yeah. And one question I have as it relates to the offices of elected officials that, voters might rarely notice, they may not even get down to the bottom of their ballot.
Public utility commissions, treasurers, ag commissioners, they're like sleeper roles in there with an outsized climate authority, clean energy authority, permitting authority that we should be thinking more about.
Caroline: I love the idea of sleeper races and sleeper offices because that's exactly the case for so many offices across the country.
You have a Arizona Corporation Commission in Arizona, that's a public service commission in Arizona. If you're listening to this, I know a lot of folks here do energy policy. Work in electricity. you know how important a public service commission is? They regulate electricity for the entire state and the current Arizona Corporation Commission has taken their renewable energy standard that was already too low.
And they said, why don't we just get rid of it entirely? Which is wild. So that's what we currently have, and that's a race where we can make gains in 26. So Corporation Commission, again, this race that, who knows what a corporation commission even does. Especially voters don't know. Another great example is a land commissioner, there's this great person running for Land Commissioner of New Mexico next year.
It's our first endorsement of 2026 Juan Sanchez for New Mexico Land Commissioner. And the Land Commissioner has an exceptionally important role in New Mexico. $3 billion of funding comes through New Mexico State lands into New Mexico public schools.
Caroline: And so what an incredibly important role to keep education.
Basically, this role has the public education system in their hands, and that's something Juan Sanchez takes very seriously. And one thing he's trying to do to improve that is diversify that funding stream and increase that funding stream to help New Mexico public schools. And for him, that means figuring out where they can add more solar, more batteries, more clean energy projects so that they're adding value to New Mexico public schools.
And also diversifying where a lot of that. Funding currently comes from, which is right now mostly oil and gas. So he is trying to create this long-term sustainable funding path for New Mexico Public Schools. Where that runs straight through is building out the clean energy economy and making sure that he's building that out in New Mexico as well.
Gil: Just back to the Arizona Corporation Commission. Public Utility Commissions, I'm sure your friends and familiar with the work of Charles at Power Lines. Right. And could you talk about, there are many public utility commissions, but not all of them are elected. They're often appointed.
what's roughly the number of, as we understand it, public utility commissions, where there are races, and how have you engaged in others? I imagine Georgia is on your list. What's that number and where are those races? And talk about why those are so important, particularly in a time of rising electricity rates and blame game going on
Caroline: It's so critical to have public utility commissioners who understand the electricity price spikes we're seeing, and also understand how they can bring clean energy on the grid to solve some of that. Across the country. These races are elected in about 10 states. They're appointed and almost all of the others.
In some states, you go through the state legislature, so all of a sudden the state legislature becomes really important in deciding who is on the public service commission. And some states they're elected directly by voters. And the big problem that we have, the central problem in how we elect these offices is I don't think this should be legal.
But in many states, the companies regulated by this commission are allowed to directly donate to the election campaigns of the commissioners.
Caroline: I don't think that should be allowed. That's how it works right now. And so it's challenging. And the other challenging thing about this, they're kind of wonky.
And so one of the big reasons that Clean Energy is struggling to win in some of these races is first you have that financing problem. And then second is that people simply just don't fill out that section of the ballot. They suffer from extraordinarily low name ID and name recognition. And ultimately, when fewer voters know about these, that benefits incumbents, like those incumbents I mentioned in Arizona who were saying, oh, we have too much.
They're actually trying to cut solar, they're trying to cut the cheapest forms of electricity they could possibly be adding to Arizona's grid right now. And people are seeing year on year price increases that are historically high in the state of Arizona. So that's the challenge that we have on some of those.
And yeah, we've supported several of these candidates over the years. Georgia is up in a few weeks. That's a really tough race. We're hopeful and we're really also planning for next year as well. But those are the two criteria for how to win one of these elections.
Guy: When you look at the comparison between clean energy contributions and fossil industry contributions to our political system, obviously a pretty significant mismatch there right now. Do you have general numbers on what that looks like?
Caroline: So. Our most conservative estimates on this say that the fossil fuel industry outspend the clean energy industry 28 to one
Gil: on state and local races? Right.
Caroline: On politics generally
Caroline: outspent about 28 to one. I think if you had to put error bars on that, the ratio is probably a little worse. It probably, if there's error bars on it, they go up not down.
Caroline: The flip side of that is that the playbook here is kind of on the table.
And so we know how the American Gas Association invests in building political power. We know how the American Petroleum Institute invests in building political power, and that does give a roadmap for where the clean energy industry really needs to step up. And like Jigar Shah has spoken a lot about this recently, about where we need to go in this moment.
Guy: When you're reaching out to the folks in the clean energy community, folks that potentially would be donors here, hopefully some of our audience today, what typically do you think keeps donors on the sidelines from contributing to more policy efforts
Caroline: Yeah, I think there's a belief that if you make electricity that is cleaner and cheaper than the existing power grid, you will automatically win out on facts.
And we all just saw how the Inflation reduction Act ended up. And even though we want facts to be helpful, we're just not in a political system where that's really holding water right now. And you can have the cheapest form of electricity, but if you're outnumbered in the state capitol, it's like a tree falls in the woods and no one's around to hear it.
Okay, great. Your Project did all these great things. If you're not actively communicating with lawmakers about that every day in the state capitol and the city council. At the Public Utilities Commission, et cetera. If that's not an active part of what you're working on as developer in clean energy, et cetera, they won't know.
We're all busy. There's a lot of stuff going on in the news right now. People don't know about the cool work you did. And so I have talked to companies that have, a quarter billion dollars, half a billion dollars invested in the market. And when I ask them what their lobbying plan is, they say, oh, we don't really have one.
We're investigating getting that. So it's like, well, you've just put half a billion dollars at risk and then you're not explaining the benefits of that to your local lawmakers, to your city council, to your state legislature. And especially that state legislature and that Public Utilities Commission, they are gonna determine the future and the fate, not only of that project sometimes, but also future projects that you can build in that state.
So building up that ability is something the clean energy industry has to start doing in the next few years. I think people are just more aligned with that now after IRA, I think.
Guy: Yeah, I think what you said there in terms of us leaning on the economics of our projects work and hoping that that story would resonate as opposed to really doing a lot of the on the ground work in those communities to build engagement.
And particularly in the context of, 15% of counties now have some sort of regulation permitting, blockage, what have you, opposition to clean energy development,
Gil: Caroline, I think a lot about past cycles, there has been a lot of money raised, not by industry necessarily for climate or clean energy.
some certainly, but groups like LCV and they've got some data science down and but those are mostly national races. Right. And again, I'm thinking of this white space that you guys are filling and bringing your background as industry perspective and. Climate endorsed candidates for an ENGO.
There can be a lot of different issues. They're not always about getting projects in the ground. Again, we love our friends and. Allied ENGO groups who get involved in politics, but could you talk about that dynamic and how you work together or where you're filling different spaces in the political fundraising and political advocacy space on the local level?
Caroline: Yeah. I think the first thing to really acknowledge and think about here is that we all are walking in the same direction, which is a clean energy economy that works for people. That's where we're headed. Within that, I said, there's 500,000 elected offices in America and right now, the last time we ran this analysis a few years ago, but over 85% of political money spent in the space still goes to the federal level.
And there's, you said, there's a lot of white space on things we can do at state and local. There's a lot of white space. There's also a lot of projects. To be built right now, it's October when we're recording this. There is a couple days of session left in the state of Illinois, and those days of session will determine whether we build gigawatts of battery storage in that state or not.
Gigawatts of battery storage are on the table, and that's the stuff we can do with the state level. So we have this dynamic where so much attention gets invested on DC but you can have so much. Impact. And oftentimes you can just have much higher leverage at the state and local level. And so that's really where we've focused.
I would say more is more, and the more people who jump in on this, the farther we'll go. And there's also state LCV chapters, right? This is a place that we, again, with the 28 to one number, that's what we're solving for. We're solving for fixing 28 to one. And so the more we invest in state and local, the more we'll get done, especially in the next three years.
What's happening in Washington the next three years. A lot of important defense, but there's a lot of proactive opportunities and things we can put on the table at the state level that I'm really excited about.
Guy: Fantastic. And Caroline, if you had 10X your current budget tomorrow and we're really able to scale up across.
Variety of different options, whether it's data science or field teams or medicinal comms. Where would you think you'd, scale first and why, and where do you see that incremental dollar moving the needle the most?
Caroline: Yeah, I think the first thing we need to build. In the next, let's say one to two years, is we need clean energy to get in on state and local, and so that's the first building block.
This is something that we've been putting together a few plans on, so if anyone's interested in listening, please reach out. That's the first piece because we're in a spot where a lot of times the nonprofit or philanthropic community is doing more. Clean energy policy, then the private sector, and we need the private sector to come in and bring honestly the knowledge and the skillset and the like up to date, cutting edge technologies that they know about and can bring to bear.
We need them in the policy and political landscape. So I'd say that's the first piece. The second piece is we need to at scale and much more significantly be supporting people. Who are clean energy champions who have shown that they can deliver, like when I'm in office. Again, here's the policy I put together.
Here are my goals. So folks listening to this are familiar with Sean Caston. Imagine three Sean Caston in every state legislature, and that's actually true. We do have some fantastic people in the state legislatures. We have people like Priya Han and the Arizona State legislature. We have folks in the Colorado State legislature that are exceptional and.
Really, really sophisticated on clean energy and on climate. It's making sure that those folks have what they need in order to be successful. So those are the two first pieces to build in the next two years. Again, especially as we're facing this larger framework of we can get a lot done at states and we're selling on a lot of things federally.
Guy: Right, of course. But I'm definitely excited about initiatives that your team's pushing forth, and I think the opportunities on the state and local level to really have meaningful impact with, frankly, unexpectedly low amounts of votes or participation or what have you. If we can think about it from a really targeted perspective.
Caroline: Yeah. I mean so many of races every year are decided by less than 5%. We had a race that decided the majority for an entire state legislative chamber, 150 votes between getting to pass another big clean energy climate package and between stalled out for two years and we have to come back in two years.
Guy: For The candidates that you're supporting, is there any guidance you're offering up or seeing on how they can avoid some of the cultural war traps or some of the key messaging pitfalls and how they can navigate where we stand today in the national narrative?
Caroline: Absolutely. The best candidates every year have one key characteristic, which is they talk to a lot of voters. So every year we get some people who are like, I can run that race, and they want someone else to do, they're like, we'll put a bunch of ads on tv. Ads on tv. Do not cut it for this level of the ballot.
They are not that helpful and they're just not that impactful. They can sometimes be helpful in some marginal places, but the number one determinant of candidate quality. Is how often they're talking to voters and how much they can in those conversations say, here's how I'm gonna show up for you. And so that gets out of culture wars real fast because you're just talking to what people want and then you're saying, here's how I can solve that.
And that's the number one piece of advice always for how you avoid this national thing. I will say that we're talking in October. Early voting has started. If I see a candidate on Twitter live starting a couple months before the election, unlike they're hosted. Your voters aren't on Twitter live,
Gil: right!
Caroline: Your voters are not tweeting.
Gil: But how do you use your data science in the screening to, oh, this person's a people person. They have high EQ. how do you, just on the upfront, that sounds hard to know. That metric before you're saying, well, they meet the other criteria.
Caroline: Well, data science gets you far, but as some of us have learned as we've tried out some of these new AI tools, a computer can't do everything.
So data science really helps us cut through a lot of the noise, right? Takes tens of thousands and turns it into a couple hundred. Then we. A political team, owned staff, and they are seasoned political experts and everybody goes through a screening call.
Gil: Ah, that's what I wanted to get at the screening call. And I bet you asked psychological questions, right?
Caroline: We ask them just campaign tactic questions, and then the people asking those questions are folks who've run successful campaigns.
We have one person on our team who defeated a 12 year incumbent for a city council race. Been the youngest ever elected city council member in his city council. That's someone who does our screening calls for a candidate. So if you wanna know what it takes to win a really tough race. At the state or local level, that's the expertise that we have on staff and that's who we're putting in these screening calls to make sure that people have a genuine plan to win and know how to talk.
And his big thing, I'll quote Junior real quick. His big thing is talk to the voters who vote, which is it's simple advice. Sure. But it's making sure that we're putting all of our candidates through that screen and then of course getting, there's a lot more nuance to that and okay, how, where, when you have to ask a ton of questions about making sure that they're ready and they're ready to run a great campaign, but talk to the voters who vote.
And what is your plan to do that? Every year we'll get individual people, individual candidates who will knock five, 10, 15,000 doors themselves and those candidates win.
Guy: And then, once you, with all this impressive effort and work on behalf of the candidates, get these folks in office. How are you tracking their voting record, their performance, how they're doing as it relates to clean energy policy, holding them to the standard that you're looking for going in?
Caroline: So once folks are in office, let's talk about 2024, right? We had 67 people win their elections in November. So what do you do afterwards? The number one. Most effective thing you can do is make sure you're in the state capitol building.
And so that's what I was saying earlier. if you build this great project, you're not talking to people about the great project that you built who are on the policy side, who, write laws that determine the future of the clean energy industry and your state. That's a key component that every clean energy company should be investing in.
And so. What we've built is a program that does that folks are in state capitals. Mm-hmm. And talking about here is. How this benefits your district, and that's the delivery mechanism. Now, do we have a little data science behind the scenes on that? Sure. That's actually something that we're excited to a new product launch coming soon.
I can't reveal too much.
Guy: All right. All right. Good tease. So Caroline emerging trends out there in terms of shifting. Voter sentiment shifts in demographics, buy-in on different key points, policy narratives, anything out there that's sort of given you optimism looking into the next couple election cycles
Caroline: largely, the political trend this year is very similar to 2017, which is Trump took office the year before and then the next year his party is doing worse on the specials and we're expecting to see worse in the Virginia election as well.
So last time that was about six points across the board and we'll see kind of this November will be a big testing case in Virginia. So that's kind of a general trend that we're seeing across the board and also heading into 26. It's looking very much like 2017, 2018 in terms of where the political pendulum is swinging.
Guy: Got it. I am gonna reach for a little bit of optimism out there on the political landscape. Obviously we see a lot of the headwinds, but anything in particular on the local or state level in terms of shifting narratives and or voter buy-in?
Caroline: I think the policy that we're seeing in Illinois is really exciting and we're gonna see other windows of opportunity for climate and clean energy policy in the next year.
I think PJM presents a huge opportunity for us to get in and like we talked about, really share. Our message of how clean energy actually shows up and reduces prices and solves some of the PJM issues that we're having. Some of these price crises, the clean energy industry has just in the last few years, for the first time in its history, been fastest to grid, cheapest to grid.
And if we keep hammering that message home, especially to policy makers who are looking for solutions to electricity price crises, we're in a good spot. So if we do that, that's positive.
Guy: We'll jump into our closing round here. So Caroline, we like to close it out with a couple rapid fire questions. I do like to know for all of our guests, what is something you're particularly grateful for?
Caroline: Coming out of Climate Week, and we were talking about this at the very beginning, Climate Week is so lovely this year because there's a bunch of people who are committed to creating the clean energy future, and they're still around and we're still doing it. People are still building projects.
In this country, and that's really positive and really insightful, and sometimes it's easy to get caught up in the noise of the news cycle, but I guess I'm grateful for the continued determination of people in the industry to build and keep building. I know that the rest of the globe is building.
Even if United States has taken a step back, we're, we're all headed in the right direction and we're headed in the direction that we need to go and, fastest to grid, cheapest to grid, it's gonna win out. I think the journey, especially around political power, is more challenging than anyone anticipated.
Guy: Yep. Couldn't agree more. Yeah. There in terms of, uh, the wonderful builders out there that keep building regardless of headwinds and anything else going on. So next one, how do you decompress from all the craziness of our political landscape today?
Caroline Uh, I'm curious to hear y'all's thoughts on it for no reason.Asking for a friend
Guy: Nature time for sure.
Gil: I just mow my lawn and, uh, that's what I do.
Caroline: I mean, listen, if I leave my phone at home. It's like phone at home for three hours, gonna go on A nice walk. What could be better?
Gil: What's election night gonna be like at your office? Paint a picture for us.
Caroline: So the elections in a few weeks, we will have our data science team tracking all of the results as they come in. And then my favorite part of election night is actually Wednesday morning and everyone's listening to this is invited, so reach out and we can get going on this. We will have a. Post-election debrief.
What happened? What does it mean for clean energy? What does it mean for climate? And that always turns into a bit of an all-nighter, but that means literally Wednesday morning after election night, we will be there giving results, giving what we know and giving people the take on what went down and what that means for the future.
Guy: . And then to wrap it up here, how can our listeners and all the good folks out in the Clean Energy community and beyond best help your important efforts at Climate Cabinet?
Caroline: The first thing I'd recommend right now is if you go to climatecabinet.org, what you can do is you can sign up for a five 10, however bet you want dollar monthly contribution to elect Clean Energy Champions. So that's something you can do today for price at coffee or maybe a brunch price. Think of how much you spent on brunch this past weekend and say, could I do a monthly recurring contribution to elect Clean Energy champions across this country? And once you do that, you will get an exclusive invitation to this election webinar that I just recommended, and you'll get immediate takes on the results of election night.
So when you do that, you'll, you're actually building the future that we need. And if you are listening and you would like to. Figure out how to get more involved, especially on the state capitol side. That's another great place. Our email is on our website as well, and that's a great place to reach out and figure out how we can collaborate together.
Guy: Alright, Caroline, we're gonna wrap it there. I know you have a ton going on. Appreciate all your efforts and really grateful for you sharing your insights today and all your great work supporting our community and the rollout of clean industry more broadly. So thank you again.
Caroline: Thanks for having me.
Guy: If you enjoyed this week's podcast, please leave us a rating and review on Apple and Spotify. It really helps us reach more listeners. You can also let us know what you thought via Twitter @ClimatePosiPod, or email us at Climate Positive@hasi.com. I'm Guy Van Syckle and this is Climate Positive.