Over the last two years, as federal energy policy whiplashed and an already polarized debate over renewables versus fossil fuels amped up, a new era of advocacy has begun.
At least nine different energy groups have launched since 2024 with a different playbook than the traditional trade associations in Washington. The new guard is more focused on pocketbook issues like affordable utility bills, economic growth, and removing barriers to building energy infrastructure, particularly at the state level, rather than selling any specific technologies. Many are skipping the corporate membership model and instead relying on philanthropy for money. That way, they can avoid the conflicts that arise when corporate members have competing interests — a dynamic that can weaken legacy trade groups’ influence.
The trend reflects several parallel shifts in the energy landscape, these new founders told Latitude Media. For one, relying on federal action is a fragile strategy when the party controlling Washington changes every four years. Plus, state and local governments have more power over permitting, electricity rates, and grid reliability anyway. And finally, utility bills are rising while the costs of clean energy are falling, arming the industry with an economic message after years of being linked to the highly politicized climate movement.
“The way to get legislators and public officials to trust you is by not advocating for any specific technology,” said Arnab Pal, executive director of Deploy Action, a group that launched in 2025 to advocate for clean energy as an affordability solution. “The point isn’t that we need more solar or batteries, but rather to clean the grid and bring costs down in the process.”
A focus on states
Deploy Action was founded by Pal and Jigar Shah, two veterans of the Biden administration’s Energy Department, and primarily works in California and Virginia for now. (Shah is also the co-host of Latitude Media’s podcast, Open Circuit.) Despite the group’s Democratic Party bonafides, the group is trying to bridge political divides by focusing on market reforms and utility accountability that can both reduce costs for ratepayers and expand clean energy.
Pal said he knew there was a need for more policy and advocacy work at the state level from his experience working at DOE’s Loan Program Office, now known as the Office of Energy Dominance Financing, where he helped implement clean energy programs under the Inflation Reduction Act. He spent time with developers, utilities, and elected officials in California, and identified both misconceptions and market barriers to deploying clean energy and bringing rates down.
Once Trump won the election, it was clear that federal action on clean energy would be largely dead. So Shah and Pal turned to the states.“We saw an opportunity to help governors create policies that incentivize utilities to use more of the existing grid, especially on the distribution side, and promote clean energy,” Pal said.
Other groups have similarly chosen to focus on state policy. Permit Power aims to lower utility bills by making it cheaper for homeowners to install rooftop solar and home batteries. That involves streamlining municipalities’ bureaucratic and expensive permitting and interconnection rules. PowerLines is a consumer advocacy group that regularly publishes reports on why energy bills are rising, and targets the state public utility commissions that decide what utilities can charge customers.
Meanwhile, Utilize Coalition advocates for policies that make more efficient use of the grid — which operates at half its capacity most of the year — through battery storage, demand response programs, virtual power plants, GETs and other technologies. Unlike the other new energy groups, Utilize Coalition has a corporate membership model including Google, Renew Home, Sparkfund, SPAN, Verrus, and Tesla.
A narrative shift
All four of these groups — like most of their peers that emerged in the last few years — bill themselves as nonpartisan.
Their approach skirts the cultural and partisan baggage that comes with specific technologies like wind and solar. Several founders made the same point: the clean energy industry has matured from its roots in the environmental movement to a market force that competes with fossil fuels, and therefore is in need of more sophisticated advocacy.
That means creating an ecosystem that expands beyond national trade groups like the American Clean Power Association or Solar Energy Industries Association, which are beholden to the business interests of the corporate members. For example, both groups count renewable energy developers and utilities as members, which makes it challenging to form consensus on issues like federal permitting reform — especially for large-scale transmission lines.
Businesses are thinking about how they can make the most money selling their products or services, Nick Josefowitz, founder of Permit Power, said. His group has a “fundamentally different lens” as a nonprofit funded by philanthropy. Namely, advocating for affordable energy for American households.
Neither ACP nor SEIA responded to requests for comment from Latitude Media.
The launch of the conservative American Energy Leadership Institute last year is yet another sign of how energy politics is evolving. The group is explicitly right-wing and aligned with President Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda, but doesn’t pick a favorite resource, especially because the grid needs all the capacity it can get now that load growth is booming from data centers and reshoring manufacturing.
“We’re in a very different moment now, where there’s increasing electricity demand and all kinds of new technologies that are more market-efficient than 10 years ago,” Chris Johnson, co-founder and president of AELI, said. “Traditionally Republicans have leaned on fossil fuels and their approach was to defend it against competitors. Now we don’t have to do that. We don’t have to choose. We also don’t have the privilege to choose which electrons are best. We just need more.”
Johnson, a regular on Fox News and former campaign manager for the Ohio Republican Party, said there’s a generational divide in the GOP. A lot of younger members are excited about nuclear and geothermal energy, as well as solar and battery storage technologies that are made in the U.S. and not imported from China. But lawmakers are wary of working with clean energy groups, in part because it puts them at risk of getting targeted in primary elections. Johnson wants AELI — which he said is funded by conservative philanthropic foundations and wealthy private donors — to be a credible voice in support of all forms of energy.
A recent win for both AELI and clean energy groups was the House unanimously passed a package of bills aimed at speeding up the federal permitting process for geothermal energy. It helped that geothermal isn’t coded red or blue, perhaps because it produces constant baseload power — a priority of the Trump administration — and also doesn’t spew emissions.
The future of energy influence
So far, those geothermal bills were the only boost to clean energy in this Republican-controlled Congress, and they still need approval in the Senate. And it remains to be seen whether the emerging messaging on cost savings, grid reliability, and economic growth is a winning strategy.
Permit Power this year has had success in five states, although all Democrat-led so far. New laws in Connecticut and Virginia require the creation of an automated permitting platform for home solar and batteries that local governments also must adopt or match. The goal is to eliminate slow, paper-based processes that can add thousands of dollars to installing projects.
Colorado legalized solar systems that are small enough to fit on balconies and can plug into a standard outlet, also known as plug-in solar. The state also became the first in the country to allow certain rooftop solar systems to interconnect without a utility agreement.
“We’ve found that both Republicans and Democrats want to make it easier for families to save money on their utility bills, even if they might want to go about it in different ways,” Josefowitz said, noting that the Texas state legislature is discussing how distributed energy resources like battery storage can lower residential energy costs and reduce congestion on the grid.
Deploy Action worked with Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger on a grid utilization law this year. While Democrats hold the majority in the state legislature, the law also won support from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. It directs utilities to study whether there are cheaper ways to boost grid capacity than building new poles and wires, such as DERs and grid-enhancing technologies. Some members of the Utilize Coalition supported the law, as well.
But Steve McBee, CEO of the sustainable energy investment firm Huck Capital, said the clean energy industry must do more to change the larger cultural narrative and appeal to the center-right. McBee founded Amped earlier this year, a political fundraising and advocacy group, to try and build a clean energy political force to rival the influence of the oil and gas lobby. That includes mobilizing more cash and pushing a new message through more decentralized, digital media channels like social media influencers and podcasters.
“We should be able to win a lot of support because we’re increasingly winning on price, our products can get on the grid faster to power AI, they give grid operators more flexibility, and domestically sourced clean energy can’t be blocked or embargoed by a foreign power,” McBee said. “There’s a national security component that’s really important, especially with what’s happened in the Middle East.”
They have a long way to go. During the 2024 election cycle, the oil and gas industry spent nearly $250 million, according to data tracked by Open Secrets. By contrast, the clean energy sector — categorized as “alternative energy” — spent nearly $22 million. The disparity similarly shows up in federal lobbying expenditures.
