Taking a stance: How carbon-free commitments affect your brand and your business

Climate change has been in the news for decades; what’s different today is that people feel it personally and have strong fears about the health of the environment. Millennials in particular are making purchasing decisions based on a company’s environmental commitments—or lack thereof. In this session, employees from Xcel Energy, Idaho Power, and PNM discussed how their utilities made significant carbon-reduction commitments and how those commitments affected their brand and business.

After the session, we asked Melissa Thom, marketing specialist at Idaho Power, a few questions about her presentation. Check out her video responses below. And if you’re an E Source member, visit the E Source Forum 2019 page to download the presentation.

Our questions for Thom:

• How do you manage mixed feelings about carbon reductions on social media, especially with people who have very strong, long-standing opinions? (0:11)
• How do you integrate feedback from social media into your plans? (1:42)
• How does your senior leadership see this affecting the utility in the coming years, and how are they talking about this in terms of the future of your business? (2:39)