How can climate startups understand and influence policy? The key is radical collaboration, authenticity and data
A few weeks back we co-hosted a panel event at Sustainable Workspaces: “Guerrilla policy change - how startups can understand and influence climate policy”. The conversation between panellists was hugely insightful for any startups thinking about their position in the policy landscape. We’ve put together a TL;DR for those who couldn’t make it, filled with actionable tips on how startups can influence climate policy.
A reminder of our panellists for this event:
Baroness Bryony Worthington, British environmental campaigner and life peer in the House of Lords.
James Byrne, Partner at Sustainable Ventures.
Dr Michal Nachmany, Founder and CEO at Climate Policy Radar
Michael Holder, Deputy Editor at BusinessGreen
Moderator: Amali de Alwis MBE, CEO at Subak
How can startups know where to start, and how they interact with policy?
Policy crosses and intersects with everything we do - both as citizens and as organisations - so it’s critical to have an understanding of the relevant policy landscape. According to Michal Nachmany, Founder and CEO at Climate Policy Radar, a climate startup should start with a mind mapping exercise of where their organisation interfaces with policy issues. At Climate Policy Radar, their purpose is to speed up, and ease, this exercise of assessing policy - there is currently a difficulty in gaining access to this information. It’s not that it doesn’t exist, but it’s hard to find. This exercise is about understanding who are your counterparts, what are the blockages to implementation of your solution, and crucially, who are the people responsible for the policies that block you or enable you?
Once you’ve done this, and begun to recognise the importance of policy to your organisation, it’s critical to make this a part of team conversation. In your weekly team meeting, have a ‘what happened in the policy landscape this week that’s relevant to our team?’ These are things that we forget to do, because it’s so easy to get caught up in business-as-usual. By starting conversations, you can bring awareness to the importance of policy in your respective businesses.
How can startups get involved with policymaking and dialogue with policymakers?
With an extensive climate policy background, Baroness Bryony Worthington, who co-authored the UK’s 2008 Climate Change Act, argued that evidence-based policymaking is vitally important to make policies effective and reduce unintended consequences. If you have compelling evidence and data underpinning what you are proposing, civil servants are more likely to listen: they want to find independent voices amongst a landscape of lobbying from vested interests. For them, it’s a breath of fresh air when they are approached by an organisation with an authentic voice, driven by data, doing what they do because it’s the right thing to do - not purely chasing profit incentives. This authenticity is crucial to enable startups to have an outsized influence and impact, even as small organisations with limited resources. To grow this impact further, collaboration with other actors is essential, whether small or large, for-profits or not-for-profits, teaming up and working together can grow momentum for the issue you are campaigning for. This opportunity, and appetite for collaboration, is particularly pertinent in the climate space: in most cases, everyone is there to help each other in an unprecedented way.
So, how do you influence policy with little or no budget? According to Michal, it’s through radical collaboration. Find collaborators, whether companies, other civil society organisations, or academia, and form those radical collaborations that are essentially egoless - all they do is promote a shared goal. That shared goal is climate action - and it’s important to highlight here that climate action is the sum of a myriad of decisions globally. In the words of Bryony, the Paris Agreement isn't going to cut it alone. That only works if there is a golden thread running from UN discussions into national legislation into regional legislation into local legislation: each scale must line up and foster these myriad decisions to work together. We’re getting there: Bryony reminded us that policy by policy we are chipping away at the incumbents, and they will fall, we just need to make them fall faster, and collaboration is the key to this.
What policy blockers are there for climate startups currently, and how do you navigate these?
Let’s take the example of energy storage. In this industry, there’s a VAT issue (around 20% on energy storage, around 5% on coal) which puts startups working on energy storage at an immediate market disadvantage. How can they, as a small organisation battling against large organisations with vested interests and more resources, influence this policy? Despite campaigning, it is really challenging as a small organisation. The key is collaboration and working with data to underpin your proposition.
For many startups, an important lever for influencing policy is also the opportunity for green job creation. As James, Partner at Sustainable Ventures, pointed out, it’s important to remember that many of the jobs around the world are created by businesses that are under five years old. But these organisations aren’t equally represented in policy. Therefore, it’s critical that policymakers are engaging better with early-stage organisations to make sure that the right support infrastructure is there to accelerate and scale these startups, and in turn boost green job creation.
How can small organisations tell narratives to land in the media?
According to panellist Michael Holder, Deputy Editor at BusinessGreen, there is a lot of opportunity now for climate tech startup stories to land in the media, but there is also a lot of noise. The bar is changing rapidly because innovation is happening so quickly, so if you’re trying to land your news in the press, it’s crucial to be aware of policy everyday and the news, and try to link that to your value proposition or product in some way.
The panel concluded with discussion on the importance of reading publications on the psychology of how humans react to stories and storytelling in order to understand influencing policy. Do they shut down and stop listening (doom and gloom)? How do you frame your story in a way that motivates and provokes a realistic optimism? As a final point, Bryony noted how research has found that in the USA, both sides of the political spectrum like a plan of action, and will respond to data-driven, actionable insights. Understanding how to communicate your story effectively for a certain audience is critical for climate startups to understand if they want to really land their story with impact.
Key points to remember
So, what are the key takeaways from this panel event?
Start a conversation with your team about which policies affect your organisation
Create a mind map of your industry’s policy landscape to help identify key contacts and blockages to adoption of your solution
Underpin any recommendations to policymakers with an authentic, data-driven approach
Collaboration with other actors is essential, whether small or large, for-profits or not-for-profits, teaming up and working together can grow momentum for the issue you are campaigning for
Policymakers need to be engaging better with early-stage organisations to make sure that the right support infrastructure is there to accelerate these organisations and create green jobs
To land your story in the media or in the hands of policymakers, it’s vital to understand storytelling, as well as being up to date with current news and linking that to your value proposition or product.
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This blog was co-authored by Subak and Sustainable Ventures.
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