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.
Way back in 2011 I wrote a blog post — kids, ask your parents what a blog post is — making note of the fact that fossil fuel interests seem to have a much better media game than clean energy. My exemplar for this fact was Frank Maisano, a media relations specialist at DC law and advocacy firm Bracewell. He worked for coal-based utilities and natural gas companies, but above all, he was useful. When journalists needed sources, quotes, or inside info, they called Frank. He issued a weekly newsletter to which every lobbyist, industry rep, and journalist in DC subscribed.
The secret to his success, I said then, is that he shilled with a light hand. He was first and foremost reliable and helpful. The industry point of view came through in the sources he used and the materials he passed on, but he never indulged in polemic. He just ensured that the industry’s perspective was ubiquitous.
Believe it or not, Frank is still at it, coming up on 30 years in the game, still publishing his newsletter, still taking calls and connecting sources, and I am sorry — and not a little impressed — to report, still better at what he does than anyone I’ve ever run across on the clean-energy side. At least he also proselytizes for the wind industry!
He and I have been meaning to talk on tape for years, and today is finally the day. We’re going to get into the current lay of the land in energy, who has power and how much, how power is exercised, who’s going to win the data center fights, what Trump hath wrought, and where things are going next. Let’s do this.
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
Resources
People & Organizations
David Roberts (Substack - Bluesky)
Volts (Apple Podcasts - Spotify - YouTube)
Frank Maisano (LinkedIn - Bio - Weekly energy newsletter)
Bracewell Policy Resolution Group (Website)
Other Orgs:
Company & Industry News
Meet the super PAC working to crush clean energy’s political foes
Trump administration’s latest buyback of offshore wind leases brings total to nearly $4 billion
Voters are fed up with data centers, and both parties are trying to cash in for the midterms
Bills & Primary Sources
Related Volts Episodes
Should we feel good about the trajectory of clean energy post-Trump?
Sen. Brian Schatz wants permitting reform, but not like this
Transcript
David Roberts: With no further ado. Frank Maisano, welcome to Volts at last.
Frank Maisano: Dave, I’m so happy to be here. I gotta tell you, I’ve longed for this day when I can sit here with you and have just a fun, down-to-earth conversation about our history and the things we’ve worked on over the years. And as you’ve mentioned already, kind of the curve of my career and really doing similar things for all industries across the sectors. So today almost I think I work as much for renewables as I do for our fossil fuel clients as I did in the past.
David Roberts: Yeah, it’s an interesting perspective. We’ve been running alongside each other for many years. I’ve... a long time subscriber to your newsletter. You are, as we were just saying off mic, a charter subscriber to Volts. Thank you, thank you for that, of course.
Frank Maisano: Yes. I do appreciate the hard work that you do and the podcasts that you put in and this is a gem, this podcast. I mean, seriously, you have done such great work and I know people listen to it all the time. And it’s the target audience that I really want to reach out to a lot of times with my clients. And I know you’ve had a bunch of my clients on here over the years. I can think of Lisa Jacobson and the wind industry and some folks like that. But I mean this is a great audience and you’ve really built something special here and I appreciate that you allow me to be part of it.
David Roberts: Well, I appreciate that, but I’m terrible at taking compliments. So let’s move on quickly. So, Frank, you’ve been at this for 30 years. You’ve been doing what you do for 30 years. What is it that you do? How would you describe your job? What does it consist of? You know, you have clients, they come and hire you. What are you doing for them, and how do you do it?
Frank Maisano: Yeah, you know, Dave, the best way to really look at it is that I am like a conduit to reporters, to folks who have a position that they wanna get across, right? So back in the day when we first started talking, I was working for, as you said, utilities that were mostly heavy with coal. In fact, many of those guys today are utilities that are almost equally as balanced with renewables, right? Which is over 25 years, which has been kind of an amazing guidepost that they’ve been on.
But basically, when we were first starting this, we always felt like environmentalists had the advantage, right? Environmentalists could put out studies, they could put out reports. They could say what they wanted. They were always willing to be quoted. And a lot of times, industry clients were afraid to talk to the press. They were afraid of reporters. They just didn’t want their views. They thought it was better for them to just, you know, not say anything, right?
And so over the years, my colleague and I, Scott Segal, who you know well as an industry expert, and others who we brought on, were able to convince a few folks that we needed to get in the game. Not to send out press releases that sounded exactly like press releases that were self-serving and certainly would never be published by a mainstream journalist, but to try and level the playing field in a story so that you heard the views of industry, because, you know, there is a second side to the story, and not necessarily one that environmentalists are always gonna agree on.
But there is an energy interest, there is a cost interest, there is a supply interest, there is a technology interest, right? All of these pieces oftentimes get left out in a very narrow view that many environmentalists looked at when they talked about these things and they promoted. So our goal was to get into the game, to be a resource, to provide good information to people, be clear about who was saying it, right?
And I think what we’ve done over the years is we’ve maintained a reputation as somebody who, as you said, is helpful, somebody who is quick and able to respond with good experts and valuable information, and reporters over the years have grabbed onto that.
David Roberts: Yeah, I’m curious if it was always kind of the founding, if it was always your strategy from the beginning, because, you know, mostly if I just described to a random third party like, “Oh, he’s a media guy who works for, you know, the industry.” They think of someone who’s aggressively pushing a message, but most of what you do is just help. Most of what you do is just connect people to sources, send reports out, give quotes. Mostly you’re just being helpful and you’re not really pushing your perspective, and I wonder if did you always have an instinct that would work better?
Frank Maisano: Well, you know, again, I felt like the things that I looked at what was happening with industry spokespeople before, right? And we were looking, Scott on the legislative and lobbying side and me on the public relations side, we kinda came together and said, “There’s gotta be a better way for us to influence this discussion,” right, to get these points in. And I guess my personality kinda fits into the MO that you were talking about, which, you know, I don’t wanna go out there and bang the drum and hit people over the head with stuff.
What I wanted to do is be, develop a reputation as somebody who they could rely on, right? Somebody who was valuable, somebody who they could have a beer with, right? And it’s funny because Bruce Nilles and I always at these SEJ events, and, you know, and environmentalists and Joel Finkelstein and all these guys who are titans of the environmental community media shops, that I always found purchase with these guys when we were at these events and where we were standing outside EPA, you know, waiting for reporters to come out, and I always wanted to be the nicest guy I could be because they always wanted to not like me, right? It’s very hard to not like a guy who is nice, is affable, is willing to share a joke, and is a very normal person, right? And just happens to, you know, represent the natural gas industry or a pipeline or something like that, right?
So for me, the value was common friendship. For me, the value was being a nice guy. For me, the value was trying to figure out a way to beyond that, level the playing field in stories so that at least the industry perspective was understood, and not even necessarily quoted, but understood and represented where possible.
David Roberts: You gotta turn the Rage Against the Machine down.
Frank Maisano: Yeah. There you go. It’s funny, that’s another thing, Dave, that people don’t know about me. I’m a huge fan of Rage Against the Machine, which is kind of the opposite of what Rage Against the Machine stands for, so don’t tell Tom Morello.
David Roberts: I know. I’m sure Tom Morello would find this highly ironic and amusing that you’re a huge fan.
Frank Maisano: Yes, it is an irony. In fact, we saw the last show on their last tour in New York City, of all things, and I took my kids.
David Roberts: I like following your musical adventures.
Frank Maisano: Yes, we tend to do some fun stuff. That’s the other thing, Dave. With the newsletter, right, I started reaching out and providing information to people through the newsletter, and then I tried to make it personal, right? I tried to have a good time with it. I tried to put a regular face on it. And so whether it was in person or whether it was through the newsletter, I was just trying to show people that the industry guys were a regular guy, and it really kinda changed the dynamic about how they were perceived and gave us a chance to get in the game, and that was really the point of it.
David Roberts: Well, I wanna start by asking a few questions about Republicans. Last year, you told the Washington Examiner that the Trump administration had derailed much of the work that’s going to help us meet our power demand, and that, quote, “Republicans don’t care about the energy transition.” I think you probably have better insight, you probably have more close contact with Republican legislators than most people I talk to and than me. I’m just curious where their heads are at. It’s so hard to know these days because Trump is like, blots out the sun, and it’s very difficult to distinguish what’s Trump from what’s the rest of them. So I’m just curious, like, do they not get it? Are they really ideologically committed to fossil fuels? Are they just kowtowing to Trump? What’s going on in the Republican caucus right now?
Frank Maisano: Wow. You know, there’s so many nuanced answers to that question. We can talk the whole hour just about this one question. I mean, look, let’s be clear about a couple of things, right? Republicans right now are somewhat, and I say somewhat because I think it’s loosening, the grip is loosening, beholden to Trump and his iron grip on where the party has been over the last, let’s just say two years, but even before that, right? I always like to distinguish between a couple of things. One, there are Republicans in this body in Congress who still are heavily favorable toward renewables, toward clean energy, towards an energy, a positive energy transition.
And again, I think the difference between what maybe I would argue and where you have argued over the years is I know you wanted a faster transition, right? And I’ve always argued that a slower but more steady transition to allow technologies to develop, to allow cost to come down, to allow infrastructure to be built, all those things were the essential for us to have what would be a smoother transition without cost spikes and increases. And I mean, look, I was an electric car driver for a long time, and one of the reasons people don’t want electric cars is because they’re afraid of the infrastructure and they don’t like waiting to charge their car and things like that.
And so, you know, there are certain behavioral things that always impact the reality, the energy reality we’re in. And I think there are technology things that do that, and there are innovation things that do that. And so, again, I think there’s a good core group of Republicans who still think that energy transitions are important, reducing emissions, whether it through technologies like carbon capture and sequestration, or energy efficiency, or even transitioning from coal to natural gas to renewables and making renewables a more viable option in the energy mix.
There’s still a core group of Republicans who believe that. I just think in the last two years, Dave, they’ve kind of gone off in a corner and just kind of kept to themselves, right? Because they’ve had to. And part of that is because of the dynamics here in Congress, right? That we have such a narrow majority in Congress, it really has handicapped the body to the point where when I worked in Congress in the ’90s, Bob Dornan and Bob Barr were the craziest of the crazy members, right? And they would say wild and crazy things. And on the Democrat side, it was Traficant, James Traficant, right?
So those guys were always looked at like outliers, right? And where we are today is the equivalent of those guys today is Chip Roy, is Andy Harris, is Andy Ogles, right? And you have a handful of guys in the Republican Party who could take hostage the entire struggling debate. And remember, you have relatively new leaders here, right? We don’t have Nancy Pelosis, and I respect Nancy Pelosi to the end of the world.
David Roberts: How about Johnson?
Frank Maisano: I think Mike Johnson is a nice guy, right? And he’s done yeoman’s work to try and make the trains function in the body, but he is not Tip O’Neill, and he is not, you know, Bob Michel.
Listen to this episode with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Volts to listen to this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
