How energy politics work inside DC

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Back in 2011, I wrote that fossil fuel interests had a much better media game than clean energy. My example was Frank Maisano, a media relations guy for coal utilities and the natural gas industry. Thirty years on, he’s still at it — still writing his newsletter, still connecting reporters to sources, still better at it than anyone on the clean side (sigh). So I’m finally talking to him about it: clean energy trade groups nobody in Washington fears, Trump’s daft efforts to kill renewables, the PAC picking off dirty-energy Republicans, permitting and data center fights, and the climate denial shop he worked for in the ‘90s. Spoiler: he regrets nothing.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

03:46 – What a DC media strategist actually does

09:50 – Republicans, Trump, and a narrow House majority

15:29 – Why tax cuts beat energy in the OBBBA fight

18:54 – Competing with China on AI without the electric stack

21:15 – Paying $4 billion to hand back offshore wind leases

28:07 – Red-state wind and the orders keeping coal plants open

32:52 – Clean energy trade groups and the building trades

38:41 – Gas as a bridge, and what longer term means

44:55 – Whether a half-gas trade group can serve clean energy

48:43 – A coherent clean vision against an incoherent coalition

51:14 – Do the green groups still scare anyone

55:18 – Permitting reform and the Whitehouse-Capito path

59:46 – Data centers, animal spirits, and the midterms

1:06:48 – The revenge PAC, and whether it is working

1:12:31 – Congress, the courts, and what Democrats could do

1:18:53 – COP, climate change, and the client he would turn down