EESI After 40: Looking Ahead at What Comes Next… | Article

Last year was a great opportunity to reflect on EESI’s 40 years of history, accomplishments, and cast of characters. While the need for science-based, nonpartisan policymaker education has been a constant from the start, the “how” of what EESI does has evolved based on the fact that things change. What worked in 1984 is different from what worked in 1994, 2004, or 2024. Our 40th anniversary article series is a great overview of EESI’s origins and work to date.

But here we are in the new year: 40 years old and staring down 41. Our laurels were fun to read and write about, but ours is a “What have you done for me lately?” world. So, now is the time to regroup and forge ahead because, frankly, climate action is more urgent now than at any time in EESI’s history. Our planet is getting warmer, and our civilization is causing it. The challenges facing us are steep, and the path forward is lined with uncertainty.

So what do we do about it? Well, the simple answer is that EESI will continue to do what we do best: providing science-based, nonpartisan educational resources to members of Congress and their staff. EESI has made many important contributions to climate action, and the Congressional need for reliable information is still there. Our other key audiences include other federal policymakers, journalists, our fellow policy wonks and advocates, and others with a curiosity about climate science and solutions.

But “do what we do best” is not an especially insightful response to a question so existential. So, more specifically, here are some thoughts about some ways the “how” of what EESI does could continue to evolve in 2025 and beyond. Feedback and comments are welcome.

EESI will continue to meet policymakers where they are. Unfortunately, there are very, very long odds of another Inflation Reduction Act-sized package of investments in climate solutions being enacted in the near future. And even the investments already provided by Congress are not a given to stick around. But none of this means that nothing will happen this year or next.

You may be surprised to know that in our meetings with Congressional offices so far this year, we are already hearing about interest in finding bipartisan common ground in energy-efficient manufacturing and industrial decarbonization, sustainable extraction and reuse of critical minerals, research and development in clean energy technologies, and community resilience. We will meet the moment by strengthening our networks across these issues and developing new briefings, articles, and fact sheets to help members of Congress and their staff craft new policy proposals to advance these and other climate solutions.

During the first few months of 2025, the EESI policy team will meet with more than 100 Republican and Democratic offices to gauge priorities and interests and ensure that our educational resources are timely and relevant. We will interact in one way or another with hundreds more offices throughout the 119th Congress.

We will find new and relatable ways to communicate the urgency of the climate crisis and ability of win-win-win solutions to deliver multiple benefits. Attendees of our first Congressional Climate Camp briefing this year, Navigating Climate Information for Effective Policy-Making, were treated to an innovative, interactive presentation about the drivers of climate change and relative impact of available solutions. We have dramatically expanded our presence at UN climate summits through extensive coordination with Congressional staff delegations and by organizing side events and press conferences. We recently revamped our fact sheet and issue brief formats to make greater use of infographics. EESI has a podcast, which gives us even more flexibility to cover climate solutions. We never take a break from looking for new and better ways to reach policymakers as well as the media and general public.

Our Resilient and Healthy Rivers series reflects another step forward in our approach to policymaker education. EESI has organized briefings in series for a long time, and our coverage has routinely featured community resilience in coastal areas and elsewhere. What is new is that this series is online-only—by choice. Our core audience of Congressional staff are a lot more comfortable these days with online-only briefings—and many actually prefer watching presentations from their desks. Online-only briefings allow us to expand our pool of potential panelists to include experts and practitioners who reside far outside the Beltway. We have learned a lot about when to move topics to a virtual platform to maximize the inclusion of local perspectives without any drop-off in quality, panelist interaction, or audience engagement.

Embracing ways to include perspectives from our speakers from more places reflects our core values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice. These core values are a big part of what makes EESI a successful enterprise. These are not—and will never become—buzz words that can be adopted or discarded depending on which way the wind blows. We have a lot of room for improvement, and we constantly remind ourselves of that. But our commitment to these core values makes us more creative, more capable, more welcoming, and better able to accomplish our mission and achieve our vision.

We will stay true to who we are and what we stand for. Our board of directors led EESI through a process in 2020 to establish a mission and vision statement that could, for the first time, guide our decision-making. We refer to our mission (“to advance science-based solutions for climate change, energy, and environmental challenges”) and vision (“a sustainable, resilient, and equitable world”) all the time in proposals, reports, and internal deliberations. Our new mission and vision keep us focused, and that focus allows us to make an outsized positive impact for an organization of our weight class. And that outsized impact is not something that will change anytime soon.

Author: Daniel Bresette