Before You Can Transform the Energy System, You Have to Improve it
Many people think investing in renewable energy, storage, and climate technology means paying a lot of money to rebuild the exact same energy system they already have. To support projects locally, people need to feel they’re getting something new, valuable, and observable.
This dynamic showed up in a recent Shearwater Strategies focus group. One participant reacted to a proposed energy storage project by saying:
“I already cook dinner at 4 pm because electricity is so expensive at the normal time. Now they want to build this expensive new equipment? We should focus on fixing what we already have.”
I love this quote, because it highlights two reinforcing barriers that renewable energy and climate tech companies face:
New investment feels unnecessary when people don’t see an obvious benefit.
Project benefits don’t always sink in, even when they directly address major pain points.
In this case, the proposed battery project would have helped reduce high dinnertime time-of-use rates. But concepts like energy arbitrage are very difficult to communicate in ways that register, even with B2B audiences.
When I worked with Silicon Valley tech companies, I saw similar patterns. Companies created new technologies that could transform whole industries, but most people don’t adopt new technology for its transformative potential. People adopt new technology when one or two core benefits finally click and the larger value proposition suddenly becomes clear.
We found these core benefits through audience research: interviewing early adopters to identify the key moments when they first understood a product's true value, organizing those insights into approaches to test with potential new customers, and using the resulting data to create more effective marketing and communications strategies.
I’ve seen this approach work across industries, and it can help renewable energy and climate tech companies solve marketing, policy engagement, fundraising, and project permitting challenges.
