We Stand For Energy
We Stand For Energy is a campaign created by the Edison Electric Institute, the trade association for investor-owned utilities, to serve as a platform for the industry as it develops specific messages for different audiences. We Stand For Energy recruits employees, shareholders, contractors, retirees, and others within the industry to help with advocacy outreach.
The We Stand For Energy campaign was launched in 2014. A POWER magazine article about the advocacy campaign said a consulting firm had been retained by EEI to develop the program and “the national effort of the program is supposed to ‘educate’ customers about the importance of electricity in their lives.” The article did not name the firm hired by EEI. But the domain registration revealed that DDC Advocacy is the public relations firm behind the Edison Electric Institute’s We Stand for Energy campaign. DDC Advocacy also helped the American Gas Association with that trade group’s front group, “Your Energy America,” and the American Petroleum Institute’s “Energy Citizens” campaign.
We Stand For Energy has run advertisements that urged voters in several states, including Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, and New Mexico, to ask their lawmakers to support legislation that would have harmed distributed solar energy, or oppose legislation that would have helped it. Advertisements also advocated for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a 600-mile pipeline project announced in 2014. Dominion and Duke Energy were the largest partners in the project before canceling the project in 2020. (Southern Company sold its 5% share in the project months before the announced cancellation.) The We Stand For Energy campaign also featured critical statements about Environmental Protection Agency rules, including the Clean Power Plan and Waters of the U.S. Additionally, when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) opened a docket to propose new rules implementing the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA), We Stand For Energy submitted a letter from 250 people in support of the Commission’s decision to revisit the policy.
We Stand For Energy’s Ad Spending
Utilities continue to stall and limit climate action by funding front groups to spread climate misinformation and false solutions to solve the crisis through advertising on social media networks.
Using data from the Meta Ad Library API and existing code from Brown University, EPI created a tool to expose the amount utility front groups are spending on advertisements about social issues, elections, or politics across Meta technologies, along with the specific regions the advertisements target.
