Resource Library

Last week, Climate Outreach released a revamped version of their amazingly helpful Climate Visuals website (more below). Drawing from that tool as well as other groups’ research, this week we revisit what we know about which climate and clean energy images are most effective at engaging and mobilizing people on our issues.

Solar power has had its fair share of the sunlight – er – spotlight this year, thanks to everything from POTUS’s January tariff on imported solar panels, to efforts to update renewable energy standards in Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada, to Maine’s continued fight over net-metering. This week we revisit what we know about engaging the public on solar, and highlight some of the Lab community’s freshest insights from our recent Peer Learning Exchange on Engaging Solar Owners in Energy Advocacy.*

A common request the Lab team gets from Lab members is “big picture, tell me what works for better public engagement on climate.” This week we offer some answers to that big question, drawing on a multi-year collaboration between the Analyst Institute and the Climate Advocacy Lab.
First, some context on that collaboration. In many ways, our organizations are kindred spirits, a Hall & Oates for the world of evidence-based advocacy. We both help facilitate public engagement-related research in our respective spaces (the broader progressive community for Analyst Institute and climate and clean energy advocates for the Lab) and make the results of that and other research accessible to organizations on the ground. And we both share information with our members through a combination of in-person workshops, email updates, and members-only websites. (If you’re not already a member of the Analyst Institute, you can sign up here!)
Over the past four years, our work together has focused on learning how to mobilize people to take action on climate. In today’s alert, we’re highlighting 5 of our top recommendations based on that work.

Last week a few dozen Lab members convened in D.C. for our fifth Research + Experimentation workshop. The core of these workshops involves Lab members sharing recent field experiments and polling they’ve conducted around how to better engage Americans on climate and clean energy. Over the years, the “R&E” community has grown and diversified, piloted new initiatives to advance our collective learning capacity, and really embodied the Lab’s vision of a creative, generous, fun, and impactful movement! Read on for insights and learnings from a few of the research projects that were shared last week.