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Nov 29, 2023

Utility Program Marketing 101: The Challenges of Climate Change Misinformation

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Syd is a senior content specialist and all-around word nerd for Virtual Peaker. Syd believes in the inevitability of renewable energies and in implementing a diverse energy portfolio and is...

If you’ve spent any time on the internet, you’ve likely experienced the expression "do your own research." The basic premise is simple enough—that we can all benefit from an open mind eager to learn—but that same premise underscores the increasing erosion of trust between audiences and media outlets. For example, a survey from 2022 discovered that 38.2% of Americans surveyed admitted to accidentally sharing misinformation. While social media is a net positive for democracies, it also serves to amplify inaccuracies of all shapes and sizes including the proliferation of climate change misinformation that has grown recently on Twitter. This climate change misinformation challenges utilities to grow and develop their demand flexibility and distributed energy resource (DER) initiatives. Let's look at how to overcome the difficulties caused by climate change misinformation.

Exploiting the media is as old as the free press. Early examples of public misinformation illustrated the power of using a visible platform to amplify harmful and often ugly opinions to sway public opinion. Most recently, the expression "fake news" implies that the inaccuracies in the news were either the fault of intentional misinformation or poor research, which is an important distinction: is the misinformation intentional or not? For the purpose of this article, we're focused only on the outcome, not the intent; because climate change misinformation undermines environmental movements and objectives, patiently educating customers is the only thing that matters for utility program managers.

The study of climate change began in earnest nearly 400 years ago, when Johann Baptista van Helmolt inadvertently discovered carbon dioxide. That began the long process of recognizing how humanity has impacted climate change. Unfortunately, climate change is a direct threat to the fossil fuel industry, which has funded costly lobbying initiatives designed to undermine climate actions. These efforts have fueled decades of debate over climate change that have resulted in a few of the following claims:

These are just a few of the more common examples of climate change misinformation. For a more recent example, a January 2023 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience presented an erroneous theory about climate change that has since gone on to have millions of views. What that means for utility program managers is that climate change misinformation is not only prevalent, but ongoing, which will complicate opportunities for customer engagement in the demand flexibility and DER programs needed to enhance grid resiliency, minimize costly peak demand energy spending, and help utilities meet decarbonization goals.

Research indicates that in 2021, there were around 10.2 million U.S. utility customers enrolled in demand response programs. These customers helped utilities conserve a total of 984.13 gigawatts of electricity, which minimizes the need for expensive peak-demand energy purchases while strengthening the grid. And utilities need all the customers they can to prevent blackouts. From educating customers on the facts and virtues of demand flexibility or offering reassurance that their data and privacy are secure, utility program managers have their work cut out. Let's look at a few ways that you can help educate against climate change misinformation and engage your customers.

In general, bring your own device (BYOD) programs can come in a variety of shapes and sizes depending on the preferred OEM device partner. On the development side, starting any BYOD program takes some market research to determine the best possible device to develop a program around. What that means is that prior to piloting or scaling an existing demand flexibility program, utility program managers may benefit from understanding the best and most common devices in an area, which will potentially yield a wider net of customers.

So how do you engage potential customers to enroll and participate in your demand flexibility programs? Here are a few tips:

Ultimately, remember to keep the language of your messaging simple. Explain to customers what each program does, what their incentives for enrollment and participation are, and how this program will impact their lives. For example, if you’re running an EV-managed charging program, minimize range anxiety concerns by explaining to customers how this might affect their charging behaviors or how/if they can opt out of a program as needed.

One way to fight climate change misinformation is by assuring customers that their participation is safe from cyber breaches. In a recent survey, 73% of all respondents admitted to mistrusting their smart appliances. Right now, smart appliances are in around 16.38% of all homes worldwide, a growth of 8.2% since 2018. Still, research indicates that that figure will only grow to around 28% by 2028 globally, meaning that overall smart device adoptions remain sluggish. In 2022, there were over 422 million individuals affected by data breaches, so it's understandable why many customers may find smart technologies, especially tech WiFi-enabled devices, concerning.

The easiest way to fight cybersecurity and privacy issues is full transparency. Explain to your customers how your program will work, especially in terms of their personal agency; customers need to know they still have control in their own homes. Likewise, they need to know what the data you might collect is for. By and large, utility program managers use this information for things like demand baselining or forecasting, to help garner a better pattern of usage and need. Explaining to your customers that any information collected is designed only to enhance program efficiency is a great means of minimizing a very understandable anxiety. If there is a breach, remain equally transparent (within reason) in what has happened, how it happened, and how you plan to prevent it again.

As of 2021, around 57% of all adults in the U.S. believed that global warming is happening. As the effects of climate change continue to come into focus, utilities face an uphill battle. When the subject of climate change is addressed, it's often presented as a binary position—one person who debates the existence of climate change and another who disagrees, despite the reality that 97% of all scientists agree that climate change is a serious threat; suggesting that climate change is a two-position issue is, in itself, a form of climate change misinformation. Mitigating climate change misinformation means politely and patiently responding to rumors like a national ban on gas stoves or removing vehicles as part of an effort for "climate confinement" by kindly sharing the facts. Be patient and kind, always cite your sources, and market your programs as far and wide as possible.

"As of 2021, around 57% of all adults int he U.S. believed that global warming is happening."

Unfortunately, the remaining 43% are likely going to remain stubborn on this until they start to see the climate impact their communities, whether by floods, droughts, storms, rising sea levels, or otherwise. Of course, waiting to act by then makes it immeasurably harder to have the necessary impact..

Maybe. But research indicates that younger generations are less conflicted by global warming, so I anticipate seeing that figure change.

I have no doubt that the climate is changing. My questions are simple, though. We know that some 12,500 years ago the climate changed drastically. Mile high ice sheets that spread across continents melted almost overnight in geological time and a warming trend began. This has been interrupted a couple of times, but the trend continues. Looking deeper into the past we see that there have been multiple cycles of glaciation followed by warming periods. There were not enough people to cause any of that, yet it happened as surely as what we see today. So: Explain to me why this is true. Why does it happen? What caused it? Why is it happening now, and exactly how much of this is caused by Man? Put the politics aside and really get down to actual science. If it doesn't fit your ideal of solar and wind, so what? All I want is the truth, backed by hard science that can explain the climate we live in and the climates our ancestors lived in. The stakes are too high, species die due to climate change. Heck, we have wildfires because we don't have the megafauna that once cleared the forests. Tell us what happened, how, and why.

I believe that the purpose of Mr. Bishop´s post is to advise utilities on dealing with misinformation in the process of marketing products like BYOD, demand response, etc.

While there is certainly overlap with your questions that express doubt about human caused climate change, I suggest that you start at the other end of the question: Instead of starting with familiar questions that seem to cast doubt on man´s effect on the environment, I suggest starting with basic climate change science and work from that end. The exercise may well help you answer your questions in an effective way. in other words, as an old teacher of mine suggested, try to see the "big picture" instead of zeroing in on relatively small purported facts that are meant to bring down the whole "house of cards" of climate change science. I think that is what Mr. Bishop is driving at, that is, "fake news" is often much sneakier than just telling lies. Fake news experts like Mr. Rogan specialize in taking "facts" out of context and creating false narratives and speculation of what such facts really mean and to what they may apply. Often fake news is simply presented as a means to get attention, to get "clicks". Lots of clicks are not proof of veracity or validity. Far from it.

There are numerous excellent sources of basic climate change science. Here are a few that have been previously presented on EnergyCentral.com:

1. This one is from the NY Times. I know it is not everyone´s favorite source. But it presents information in a question and answer format that may be of interest and is from responsible sources of basic science.

2. This one is from NASA and provides answers to the question of "How Does the Solar Cycle Affect Earth's Climate?" and "How do we separate the effect of the solar cycle from other possible effects on Earth's climate?"

3. This one is from the BBC and suggests "Climate change: Seven ways to spot businesses greenwashing".

4. McKinsey is not my favorite source. But you may find it more to your liking. If you are either young or involved in business you may find it more relevant to you (I am old and retired.) This article asks crucial questions on Climate Risk and what it means for our futures. One is "Why investing in nature is vital to our collective future" and another is "This Earth Day, invest in our planet".

I would be most interested in hearing what you think of these sources and if they affect your thinking about climate change.

As I stated, I believe climate change is happening. My question is: why? Is the data really there to support human causes? It's highly likely, but there is so much contradictory evidence out there and there is so much bias on every side of the debate it's nearly impossible to ferret out the truth. We simply don't have a source that has retained the integrity, the public trust, and the transparency and depth of data to make a case that can't be argued. IMHO our entire government, and much of the media, is in such chaos it comes down to simple opinion. Not a good place to be.

To Mark Allen, Todays Climate change is different by how fast it is happening. You sited the ICE AGE that took over 5,000 years to charge a few degrees. Today it is 10 times faster and increasing.

QUOTE = As the Earth moved out of ice ages over the past million years, the global temperature rose a total of 4 to 7 degrees Celsius over about 5,000 years. In the past century alone, the temperature has climbed 0.7 degrees Celsius, roughly ten times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming.Jun 3, 2010

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