Active recommendationClimate change

DEPLOY/US

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▲ Photo by Davey Gravy on Unsplash

DEPLOY/US is a funder, convener, and accelerator of climate leadership across the political spectrum. A non-partisan nonprofit with a bipartisan team and board, they are the only organization in the US focused on scaling the impact of the entire civil society ecosystem working right-of-center on climate change, as a foundation for bipartisan policy making.

They do so by engaging right-of-center constituencies (e.g. in business, national security, faith, youth) and scale the impact of this “Ecoright field” by orchestrating multi-partner policy campaigns, by building and sharing “infrastructure” with partners (e.g. a comms shop), and by strategically funding field organizations and collaborations (funding 15 organizations in the Ecoright field over the past few months). They focus on important red states and in key capabilities like grassroots, policy research, and narrative change in the media.

We think that such work is a promising bet to improve US climate policy, increasing the likelihood of further bipartisan policy wins and making the US climate response more robust, as polarization along partisan lines presents a major risk to continued US climate leadership.

What problem are they trying to solve?

The American political system puts a high premium on bipartisanship. Unified control of government by either party is rare; US political parties secure simultaneous control of the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives an average of just once every fourteen years. Given this, relying exclusively on one party’s votes for climate progress is a high-risk strategy and, indeed, most of the significant climate policy passed has had bipartisan support. (The prominent exception to this is the Inflation Reduction Act, however it seems likely that its permanence would also require some bipartisan support.)

Despite this reality, environmental funders have significantly under-invested in the civil society infrastructure that can rally both parties on climate change. Almost all of US climate philanthropy flows to left-of-center climate action; a tiny fraction (~$30m) goes to the groups that can directly and credibly engage and mobilize right-of-center constituencies on the issue.

To be clear, we are agnostic regarding whether philanthropic underinvestment caused lack of engagement or lack of engagement caused underinvestment (most likely it is a combination of both forces reinforcing each other over time; we have not investigated this, as it is mostly a historical chicken and egg question). It is clear to us that this is a suboptimal equilibrium and that there is an authentic Ecoright field that deserves support to break out of this equilibrium.

On a practical level, this funding imbalance not only misses an opportunity to build a broader tent, but also contributes to the public misbranding of climate change as an exclusively liberal issue. Democratic policymakers are guided on climate action by a robustly funded, well-coordinated ecosystem of left-of-center civil society groups and leaders. Republican policymakers are not pushed, pulled, or guided to climate leadership by a commensurately strong ecosystem. There is an urgent need for significantly more capacity for climate-focused mobilizing from within conservative constituencies.

This is the key lever that DEPLOY/US’ work addresses. They equip and coordinate the Ecoright field of civil society groups able to credibly engage conservatives on climate change, to catalyze right-of-center environmental leadership and make possible durable, bipartisan breakthroughs.

What do they do?

DEPLOY/US is the leading group in the US focused entirely on scaling the capacity and impact of the entire Ecoright field – conservative, climate-forward nonprofits and leaders, as well as allied nonprofits engaging key constituencies (e.g. faith, hunting/fishing, small business and economic development, national security).

Their strategy empowers the Ecoright field with the funding, infrastructure, and coordination to: shape conservative media narratives about climate change; produce research products, fill data gaps and exercise thought-leadership that informs and motivates policy making; and engage key constituencies to educate lawmakers, demonstrate diverse support for climate leadership, and help lawmakers and staff put wise ideas to use.

While multi-faceted, their work can ultimately be summarized as early-stage social movement (field) building. Literature reviews indicate that philanthropy can play an important role in accelerating the growth and influence of nascent social movements.

Why do we recommend them?

There are broadly five interrelated reasons why we recommend DEPLOY/US:

A. US climate policy is incredibly important for global decarbonization: Given the importance of technological transformation for achieving climate targets and the US’s outsized share in driving innovation and technological spillover globally, there are few things as important to global decarbonization as whether the US retreats, holds, or advances on its climate policies. This will be primarily determined by domestic US politics.

B. The success or failure of US climate policy is strongly affected by partisan dynamics: The lack of bipartisan support is a major limiting factor to US climate action. DEPLOY/US is focused on addressing and clearing this barrier. They are working to strengthen the full ecosystem of Ecoright organizations that, together, constitute the right-of-center civil society effort to guide conservative lawmakers on climate change and unlock bipartisan policy wins. Conservatives have, and will continue to have, important influence on the trajectory of US climate policy. The stakes are high because of the Energy Act (2020), the bipartisan Infrastructure Bill (IIJA, 2021), the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS, 2022), and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA, 2022), which together have transformed the US climate response and are financing a broad set of ambitious bets across a broad range of low-carbon technologies covering almost all sectors of the economy and all stages of the innovation process. All of these are long-term bets whose results could help transform the US and global energy system, but most of their effects will not be immediate, making their durability and improvement a key climate priority. Because of narrow political majorities, climate policy outcomes will continue to depend on some level of bipartisan support.

Across the inevitable swings in control of the US government, a stronger and better coordinated Ecoright field will help ensure more favorable climate outcomes, particularly in political scenarios associated with relatively larger climate risk. On key priorities for continued climate progress, such as permitting reform to enable building out the clean energy economy, or continued RD&D efforts, it is reasonable to expect that some (even many) Republicans will support these efforts and that strengthened right-of-center pressure and shielding – enabled by the growth of the Ecoright field – would make a significant difference.

C. There is reason to expect this lever can be affected: A growing number of Republicans in Congress have started engaging in the climate policy dialogue, joining climate-related caucuses (e.g., the formation of the Conservative Climate Caucus and bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives), and supporting pieces of climate-related legislation (e.g., the Energy Act, Infrastructure and Jobs Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act). From similar contexts and from case studies shared with us, it appears plausible to us that the Ecoright played a significant role in this.

D. Funding for this work is very low: Despite the strategic imperative to fund center-right pro-climate work, climate philanthropy hardly does. That about $30M each year flows to all conservative-focused climate organizations (with much of this funding in D.C. advocacy) is even more striking when compared to single Democrat-leaning climate groups such as the Sierra Club or NRDC, which have budgets of 10x or more the entire Ecoright field (also see here).

E. Comparative to other opportunities: In our estimation, strengthening credible right-of-center climate pressure groups compares favorably to most other interventions in terms of upside potential. This comes both from a consideration of the risk structure, but also the impression that surgical interventions – strengthening particular technologies or approaches – is becoming less promising as the overall field matures, strengthening the relative importance of systemic interventions such as strengthening the Ecoright.

Why do we trust this organization?

DEPLOY/US is well-placed to drive and orchestrate this fieldwide scaling. Apart from their team’s long track record and credibility within the field (bios), they have – over the course of more than ten hours of conversation and written exchanges – impressed us as extremely thoughtful and strategic field-builders aware of the trade-offs, with a compelling commitment to dedicate their careers towards building a credible and effective right-of-center climate coalition that delivers bipartisan results.

In particular, we see the following as key strengths of DEPLOY/US as an organization:

  • They’re trusted by a broad network of partners (in fact, we were directed to them by others in the Ecoright field as a key player), putting them in a prime position to support cross-field collaborations and resolve intra-field conflicts;
  • They focus on a range of decarbonization-related offensive and defensive strategies, working with partners that have expertise and priorities across a range of policy instruments, levels of government, and tactical capabilities;
  • They’ve invested in and supported fieldwide assessment and learning; and
  • They’re internally equipped to have an impact through multiple pathways, e.g. media and communications, and strategic policy-focused educational campaigns in key states.

What are the open questions and how do we think about concerns?

Scaling a social movement is a less predictable and more long-term proposition than philanthropic investments in more narrowly-defined programmatic work. As such, we have less certainty over possible outcomes, in particular as they interact with different potential political environments.

We see scaling the Ecoright field as a proposition with significantly more upside than downside risk without claiming to be able to predict exact effects years down the line. Our belief in the dominance of upside comes from the fact that additional pro-climate voices right-of-center will be valuable in a broad range of possible scenarios.

We appreciate that some donors might be concerned about a risk of “greenwashing” and a scenario of climate talk for political ends without corresponding climate action. While we do see this as a real risk in general, we think this risk is low in supporting DEPLOY/US for three reasons: (i) they are a bipartisan organization focused on decarbonization outcomes, including public commitment to ambitious climate targets (see the DEPLOY/US website, which is clear about achieving net-zero by 2050 as their goal), (ii) a strategy focused on increasing the impact of climate champions in civil society, as well as (iii) tactics that focus on motivating and equipping policymakers to pursue bipartisan climate outcomes.

While we do not think the risk is zero, we do think it must be weighed against other risks such as the continued pursuit of a fairly partisan climate agenda in a political situation that will not always be favorable.

Here are some open questions that we intend to address and/or encourage other funders and researchers to consider:

  • Realized impacts: How does realized impact compare to expected impact? The Ecoright is currently nascent and funded at a very low level. This makes it a reasonable bet that there are great unfunded low-hanging fruit opportunities that could have an outsized impact compared to alternative investments. We think it will be valuable to examine the impact of investments down the line and test whether this is true.
  • Optimal level of funding: What is the “optimal” level of funding for the Ecoright? While we think it is currently fairly clear that the Ecoright is underfunded compared to potential for impact, we are unsure what the optimal level of funding would be.
  • Disentangling causal contribution of the eco-right: How can we identify the impact of the Ecoright vis-a-vis other influences? It is clear that there are a multitude of forces – younger Republican voters being more climate-concerned, policies and subsidies creating their own constituencies, the Ecoright and others – that are driving more right-of-center engagement on climate. This means that we should not interpret any move towards more climate policy support as a success of the Ecoright, but seek to trace impacts by detailed case studies.

More resources

Links to further reading, interviews, evaluations, etc. that would be valuable if someone wants to dig further.

We conducted more than 100 hours of detailed analysis, which is available upon reasonable request. Some other resources:

Neglectedness of funding

The basic case on the neglectedness on right-of-center climate philanthropy has been discussed in various articles. While we do not agree with all statements in these articles, the basic fact that right-of-center climate philanthropy is miniscule both compared to (i) left-of-center climate philanthropy as well as (ii) what would be needed to build a thriving civil society in favor of climate action on the political right appears sound to us.

Policy areas where a stronger right-of-center climate coalition could add value

Permitting Reform

The ability to build clean energy infrastructure quickly is, at this point, the primary constraint to near-term decarbonization and also, crucially, hampers the diffusion of new technologies such as next-generation geothermal energy. It is also a key priority for climate-focused Republicans.

Innovation Policy

Innovation policy is one of the highest-impact levers the US has on global emissions and Republican Senators were key in defending energy innovation budgets in the last Trump administration.

Carbon Border Adjustment

Congressional climate causes with Republicans

  1. What problem are they trying to solve?
  2. What do they do?
  3. Why do we recommend them?
  4. Why do we trust this organization?
  5. What are the open questions and how do we think about concerns?
  6. More resources