Climate Xchange Sets Its Sights On Journalists

ClimateXchange is a non-profit organization that works to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy. They do this by providing research and analysis, convening stakeholders, and advocating for policies that support clean energy.

The organization was founded in 2013 by a group of scientists, engineers, and policy experts who were concerned about the pace of climate change. The organization's mission is to "help policymakers, businesses, and communities make informed decisions about climate change and clean energy," but has, up until this point, not included media representations of the climate crisis.

ClimateXchange has a team of experts who conduct research on a variety of climate change and clean energy topics. They also convene stakeholders from across the country to discuss climate change and clean energy policy. ClimateXchange also advocates for policies that support clean energy, such as carbon pricing and renewable energy standards.

Now, ClimateXchange is taking on a new task: infiltrating local news with a new initiative to put local journalists at the forefront of climate coverage. ClimateXchange is looking to provide funding and training to local journalists who are covering climate change. 

"Despite a lot of great reporting being done it just isn’t being consumed by audiences on the scale that we would expect for such an important subject," Tom Trewinnard, the director of Syli, a newly established non-profit who is collaborating on the effort with the IKEA Foundation.

"This is where local news and broadcast are crucial: they have strong relationships of trust with their audiences, but they frequently lack money and access to expertise to cover a climate beat. They’re also reaching a very different audience to the large newsrooms who have been leading on experimenting with new approaches to climate reporting."

The initiative also seeks to train some of the doom-and-gloom out of climate reporting. "We engage audiences by telling fact-first stories about the impact of climate change and global heating on them, as well as the solutions that are available to them to create real change," says Trewinnard. "Inspiration comes from knowing what action to take."

Trewinnard’s claims are backed by data: people avoid the news simply because it’s too bleak. Up to 38 percent of likely consumers said they ignored the news in 2022—a marked upsurge from just 27 percent in 2017. And the data on climate change is clear: we must take urgent actions to avoid a climate catastrophe on planet Earth. 

"The challenge is how to explain the truly extraordinary transformation we need to go through to our audiences - a transformation that will impact almost every aspect of our lives if we are to succeed in achieving global climate goals. Newsrooms should see that as an opportunity - in the midst of these changes, as we saw with the covid-19 pandemic, service journalism plays a crucial and irreplaceable role," said Trewinnard.
ClimateXchange is also seeking ways to boost engagement through climate reporting, in order to make it financially viable for news outlets to cover this important information. The results of ClimateXchange’s initiative remain to be seen, but as the climate crisis continues to set upon us, the work they are doing has nothing to lose by comparison.