Earned media and public-affairs communications for organizations making the case for clean energy and climate action. Caplan shows how policy decisions and energy investments affect jobs, affordability, public health and local economies, and which communities benefit.
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Clean-energy claims arrive in a crowded argument. Cost, reliability, jobs, land use, permitting, local tax base, public health and climate risk can all be true parts of the same story, and different audiences weight them differently. The answer is not a larger stack of adjectives. It is evidence, credible messengers and a clear explanation of what the policy or investment changes in a particular place.
A decade of overstated green claims makes an honest one harder to land. Audiences now meet a true statement about emissions or jobs with the same suspicion they have learned to bring to a false one. That is a cost your organization pays for someone else's marketing, and the only way through it is claims that survive being checked. We wrote about how that skepticism now works in clean energy communications and in how to spot greenwashing.
Caplan's concentration in environmental and climate communications has been independently documented. In a 2021 peer-reviewed analysis of public-relations firm engagement in climate politics from 1989 through 2020, Robert J. Brulle and Carter Werthman found that 96 percent of the Caplan engagements in their dataset were for Environmental Movement organizations. They also found that Caplan accounted for more than 25 percent of PR-firm hirings in that sector.
Source: Robert J. Brulle and Carter Werthman, "The Role of Public Relations Firms in Climate Change Politics," Climatic Change 169 (2021).
That historical record does not remove the need for a current conflict check. Any organization hiring an energy communications firm should ask who else the firm represents on the same issue and whether those relationships create a conflict with the work being proposed.
The imbalance is documented. The same study found the utility and oil and gas sectors engaged the most PR firms and the environmental movement the fewest. The side making the long-term case has usually been the quieter voice.
We work backward from the rulemaking, legislative calendar, utility proceeding or other live decision so media and public participation arrive while they can still matter.
We translate jobs, investment, manufacturing, household and community impacts into arguments supported by evidence rather than slogans.
National, trade, regional and local outreach follows the decision, investment and affected communities, not a placement quota.
We identify business owners, investors, workers, health professionals, faith leaders, researchers and other voices whose authority comes from what they know or experience firsthand.
We identify what in a jobs report, investment analysis, public-health study or policy paper is genuinely newsworthy, who needs to understand it and when the findings can influence a larger conversation.
When a rule changes, a reliability or jobs claim gains traction, or a breaking event compresses the clock, we establish what is supported, who should answer and what needs to happen next.
We keep the central case recognizable while changing the local evidence, messengers and consequences that make it credible from one state or community to another.
We prepare executives, economists, scientists, policy experts, business owners and affected voices to explain costs, reliability, jobs, land use and other contested questions directly and in plain language.
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The work has included clean-energy jobs reports, national and regional media, business and investor messengers, and executive positioning around the economic case for federal and state climate action.
Read the case study: E2 | Environmental Entrepreneurs
The 30-state "I Will" campaign required a national climate argument to work credibly in very different local markets. Caplan helped identify and prepare business owners, faith leaders, union members, physicians and other local voices who could connect climate action to jobs, health, economic stability and community consequences in terms that made sense where they lived and worked.
Read the case study: "I Will" Act on ClimateWorking on a clean energy fight right now?
Start a ConversationA clean-energy engagement follows the decision or communications problem in front of the client. A federal comment window may be measured in weeks. A state narrative campaign or recurring jobs program may run for months or years. We scope to the calendar and the evidence required, not to a fixed menu of monthly activity.
Aric Caplan leads the strategy and media judgment directly. Where a client also has policy counsel, government-affairs staff, economists, scientists or local partners, the communications work is built around their substantive expertise rather than replacing it.
For more than a decade, Caplan Communications has helped E2 make the economic case for climate action across national media. Caplan is a wizard of the airwaves, sharpening our message, training our messengers, and reaching the right markets across America.
Yes. A company may need customer, investor, siting or commercial communications. An advocacy organization or public agency is more likely to be working a policy decision, public record, research finding or public-interest argument. Caplan's primary practice is the second. A business participating in a policy coalition can still be a useful messenger when the role and conflicts are clear.
In the independent 1989 to 2020 dataset cited above, Caplan's recorded climate-politics engagements were overwhelmingly with Environmental Movement organizations, with none categorized in the oil and gas, coal or utility sectors. We still review current and prospective engagements for conflicts case by case.
Both, and most energy decisions need both. Utility commissions, state legislatures and local siting bodies decide a great deal of this, and the national story usually has to be localized before it moves any of them.
A live proceeding or report launch can create earned-media opportunities in weeks. Building a durable economic or community frame in markets where it is not yet established takes longer. The first conversation should distinguish a short decision-window problem from a longer narrative one.
Yes, when the relevant administrative proceeding accepts public comment. We can help translate the proposal, reach credible participants, develop public-facing materials and coordinate earned media around the deadline, while legal and policy counsel control substantive legal positions and filing requirements.
If you have a rule, a bill or a proceeding you need to move, and the argument for it is not landing, that is the conversation. The first call costs nothing and usually settles whether there is a campaign here at all. Aric Caplan takes that call and stays on the campaign through the final decision.
