Talking offshore wind: Communication in a polarized world

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Taylor Kuykendall:

Welcome to Energy Evolution, the podcast by S&P Global Commodity Insights, bringing you your weekly dose of news and analysis on the energy transition. I'm your host, Taylor Kuykendall, and this week we're looking behind the scenes on the communications and PR and offshore wind. The technology has supporters and opponents in most markets with concerns over impact on wildlife and visual impact being just some of the arguments. Now in the US in particular, we've seen more and more pushback from the Donald Trump administration. One of the president's first moves in office was to issue a moratorium on new projects and industry players see a challenging few years ahead for the industry. I'm joined by correspondent Camilla Naschert, who's been looking into the communication strategies of the offshore wind industry for this week's episode. Hi, Camilla. Just tell us what made you want to look into this story for this week's episode.

Camilla Naschert:

Hi, Taylor. Yeah. There were actually a couple of moments in the discourse around offshore wind that highlight quite nicely just how polarized the technology really is. You mentioned Trump there, and as listeners may know, he's not a supporter of wind power generally, but a couple of weeks ago in a meeting with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen at his golf resort in Scotland, Trump spent a fair bit of time on the topic. Let's listen to a short snippet from that.

Donald Trump:

It ruins the landscape. It kills the birds. They're noisy. You have a certain place in the Massachusetts area that over the last 20 years had one or two whales wash ashore, and over the last short period of time they had 18 because it's driving them loco, it's driving them crazy. Now, windmills will not come. It's not going to happen in the United States. It's a very expensive. I would love to see ... Today I'm playing the best course I think in the world, Turnberry. Even though I own it, it's probably the best course in the world. And I look over the horizon and I see nine windmills. It's like great. At the end of the 18, I said, "Isn't that a shame? What a shame."

Taylor Kuykendall:

All right. So there we have messaging around visual impact, the impact on wildlife and concerns about costs, all of which are fairly frequently heard concerns and not just in the United States, right?

Camilla Naschert:

Yes. Absolutely. On the other hand, in many places, offshore wind is still considered a crucial component, a crucial tool in a toolbox towards achieving net-zero. In the European Union member states are looking to build offshore wind capacity to up to around 90 gigawatts by 2030 and over 350 gigawatts by 2050. That's still the target. And even in regions with more regulatory conditions, getting new projects approved requires bringing communities on site and finding solutions that mitigate potential impacts on other stakeholders.

Taylor Kuykendall:

Okay. So how is the industry tackling the arguments against wind in its communications efforts?

Camilla Naschert:

Well, one company tried something a little bit different in its latest marketing campaign, and that's Swedish state-owned utility Vattenfall. They hired Hollywood Icon Samuel L. Jackson, to advertise the biodiversity initiative. Let's just have a look at that. So imagine listeners, Samuel L. Jackson is standing on a typical Scandinavian shoreline in a raincoat looking over the horizon at an offshore wind farm. In his hand, he's got a bag of some crisps or chips for the US listeners.

Samuel L. Jackson:

Wind farms. Loud, ugly, harmful to nature. Who says that? These giants are standing tall against fossil fuels, rising up out of the ocean like a middle finger to CO₂. Deep beneath the waves they can become artificial reefs creating habitats for sea life to grow. These are Wind Farm Seaweed Snacks made with seaweed grown at a Vattenfall wind farm. Serous gourmet. So what's it going to be? Wind farms or wind farms?

Taylor Kuykendall:

Okay. Well, I think our producers are going to need to do some censoring there I think. It sounds like this campaign may have made some waves.

Camilla Naschert:

Yes. I think that's fair to say. It got quite a bit of coverage, not just in the trade press, but also beyond. It got hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube and many of the comments that I saw were quite positive. In Sweden, there was pushback as well. Some politicians have come out and said it is polarizing the debate. But to find out more about the campaign and generally the thinking behind climate and energy communications in this moment, I spoke to Vattenfall's international brand manager, Monica Holmvik Persdotter

Monica, welcome to Energy Evolution. Very glad to have you here.

Monica Holmvik Persdotter:

Well thank you for having me. Happy to be here.

Camilla Naschert:

So you started in the energy industry when you joined Vattenfall in 2024, and you've had a really varied career in branding and marketing. You worked at Dairy Company Arla, at IKEA, at Unilever and now a year into your role. Do you want to start us off with the messaging that you see important in the energy industry? What kind of message does an energy company nowadays have to convey in its branding and communications with customers and wider society?

Monica Holmvik Persdotter:

I think that joining Vattenfall was an easy thing to do because of the profile that it has in the markets where we are present and especially in the home market, which is Sweden. Vattenfall is one of those companies that is different from other energy companies because of the profile that it has, because it's so outspoken about its goal and vision in becoming fossil free. And this has been very inspirational for a lot of people to join Vattenfall and me included. So yeah. This was one of the reasons why I decided to join and to help get the message out there that we need to break free from our fossil fuel dependency.

Camilla Naschert:

Yeah. I live in Sweden myself, so I get plenty of advertisement from Vattenfall and I would describe the usual ads as fairly standard what you would expect from an energy company. So you potential customer care about the environment and we're the ones doing something about it so sign an electricity contract with us. And now this ad with Samuel L. Jackson feels very different from that. It feels more combative, more provocative and like it's almost for a different audience. So do you want to take us a little bit behind the scenes on how the ad came about and why now was the right moment for this message?

Monica Holmvik Persdotter:

Absolutely. I'd love to. But in order to do that, I need to put this a little into context before we go into the details of how this campaign came about. And I'd like to share a little facts about Vattenfall and what kind of company Vattenfall is. We're a Swedish state owned company within energy which was founded more than a hundred years ago. And the starting point for Vattenfall was actually within hydroelectric power generation. So we've been, and our starting point has always been fossil free power generation. We didn't talk about it back in those days, but it is a fact because hydroelectric power generation is. And it contributed a lot to the electrification of Sweden. And we then moved on into nuclear in the '60s and fast-forward to the millennium, we started focusing on renewable energy such as wind power. In addition to that, we also have solar, we have biomass, we have gas, and we also have some fossil fuels primarily due to the mergers and acquisitions that we've done throughout the years.

But if we look at the mid 10s, 2010s, we could see that our reputation at Vattenfall was challenged because of some of these mergers and acquisitions that we had done throughout Europe. And although we in Sweden had experience from some iconic pieces of advertising, we found ourselves communicatively in what we refer to as a sea of sameness that you couldn't tell one energy company apart from the other. So approximately at the same time, this is the 10s, 2010s was also when the topic of the climate challenge came into focus and Vattenfall decided to focus its business on becoming fossil free energy provider. Producer and provider. And what we say business is that we don't have a sustainability strategy because we don't, but we have a business strategy. And this business strategy is about sustainability. So for us it's all about providing fossil-free electricity.

So against this background, this is also what we have communicated because everything that we do within communication circles back to fossil freedom, which is our expression of breaking free from fossil dependencies. And the way that we express it is that we talk about enabling society to move, make and live fossil-free. And I have full understanding that people might see this as just marketing jargon, but for us ... I mean the people that work at Vattenfall, this is the reason why we get up in the mornings and go to work. This is the reason why there are hundreds of people applying for every job opening that we have because it feels as an important job and an important topic to address.

So I know that you asked about how did we come about to do this ad together with Samuel L. Jackson. But again, to put it into the communication context that we live in at Vattenfall, we've had this approach to communication for quite a long time. And just to give you a couple of examples, we had ... I don't know if you know the British rapper Stefflon Don, but we had her in a commercial wearing fossil-free steel braces when we were promoting the industry collaboration that we had at the time producing fossil-free steel. We had back in 2023 ... I don't know if you can recall the British supermodel Cara Delevingne who was using a face mist made of wastewater from hydrogen, which is a hundred percent clean water. So this kind of communication has been the modus operandi that we've had at Vattenfall for quite some time in addition to the base communication that we do, the one that you were referring to earlier where we talk about we are here to help you on the journey on becoming fossil-free and we can help you with your electricity agreements, all of that. But then once in a while we do these breakouts where we want to talk about specific projects that we have been working on in collaboration or by ourselves. And the Samuel L. one with the Wind Farm Seaweed Crisps is one of those. So that's how this came about.

Camilla Naschert:

And when it comes to conceptualizing a project like this, I guess it's fair to say he's probably one of the biggest celebrities that you've worked with compared to previous material. So why Samuel Jackson? Why now? Can you tell us a little bit more about how the whole ad came together?

Monica Holmvik Persdotter:

Absolutely. So let's start with the reason why now. So we have this project called WIN@sea, which is a project that we're doing in collaboration with some universities in Denmark and with industry partners in Denmark at Vesterhavs Syd on the west coast of Denmark. And we're looking at how we can co-use the marine space for both food production and energy production. And from that, what we did was that we explored what the marine biodiversity looked like to see how the artificial reefs actually helped the marine sea life. And also we put strings between the different wind turbines on which we cultivated or grew seaweed. And from there we worked with a Danish company called Wavy Wonders who helped us create the seaweed crisps. And that's how this communication project began that we wanted to communicate about the fantastic results that we were seeing in this project.

Also what we do is that we of course work insight driven, it starts and ends with insight. And we had done a lot of research on what people's perception were on different energy sources. And what we could see from the research that we were doing was that people will quite divided when it came to wind power. Some people love it and some had other opinions about wind farms. And one of the expressions that we saw there was well, wind farms as an expression of not supporting it.

So from there we said the step to connecting it to Samuel L. Jackson wasn't so big because we could see a connection and we said, "Wouldn't it be interesting if we could have somebody as him to deliver the message that would help us cut through because of the profile that we had?" So we started looking at different profiles who could help us deliver the message. And he was of course one that we looked at. And we quickly found out that he's very genuine in his commitment to developing society. We also understood that he shared the same values as we do when it comes to energy. And in addition to that, which was more of a bonus or fun fact was that he had actually started studying to become a marine biologist before his acting career took off in Hollywood. So we could see that this was a perfect match and that's the reason why it happened now, and that is also the reason why we chose to work with Mr. Jackson and he chose to work with us.

Camilla Naschert:

Was it a deliberate choice to have an American protagonist? Vattenfall course is European company and not active in America?

Monica Holmvik Persdotter:

Not necessarily. Not at all. As I mentioned before, with the previous campaigns that we've done on other projects that we promoted, those have been British, some have been Swedish. Sometimes we don't use celebrity endorsement at all, so not necessarily. But in this particular case, we chose to work with Mr. Jackson because we wanted to tap into his influence and his platform's way where he could use that to inform people about the lesser known facts on offshore wind farms.

Camilla Naschert:

Wind has obviously become increasingly political in recent years. You've said already that there is a split in public opinion. President Trump has recently spoken out strongly against it once again in a meeting with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen you don't even need to look that far. Sweden has also blocked a lot of projects on defense grounds and instead pushing for more nuclear power, which as you say, Vattenfall is looking to build as well. And it's within new offshore wind is effectively dormant at the moment because of unfavorable market conditions, which is another headwind for the industry at the moment. But when it comes to the perception of wind, why do you think it is such a divisive issue and how are you positioning yourself from a communications perspective as a wind developer to navigate that?

Monica Holmvik Persdotter:

Well, there were multiple questions in your questions, and if I just start with saying that wind power is an important part of an efficient and well functioning energy system. And we're not only a wind energy company, as I said earlier, we also do hydroelectric power generation, we do solar, we do batteries, we do biomass, et cetera. So wind is one of the parts of the energy mix, which we believe is really important for the totality of the energy mix for a sustainable energy system. So we know that we already have significant representation of this energy supply both in the US and in Europe, but in addition to the advantages that we can see from a climate perspective, it's also a relatively time and cost-efficient way of increasing energy productions. And then you mentioned Sweden and the halting of some of the projects, and I think that in all fairness, the projects that we have on offshore wind, they are progressing as planned. But there is one that we have halted where we have been very vocal about the market conditions that we need in order to progress with this project in a way.

So to add on and to address the part that you were talking about when it comes to the polarized views, we are of course aware that there is a polarized debate about wind power, but we at Vattenfall, we are not seeking to polarize any debate. We are on the contrary, aware of the pros and cons of any energy source and the way that it affects nature. And what we're trying to do is that we're trying to be as transparent as possible in the way that we work and the way that we communicate and about the actions that we are taking to minimize the negative effects on nature because we want to be nature-inclusive in the ways that we work whilst providing more fossil-free energy. And I think that the project WIN@Sea is a really beautiful example of that where it's not only but we're also looking at co-sharing the space for other industries.

Camilla Naschert:

Yeah. And that brings me to my final point. You said you were not looking to polarize, but can you summarize what was it that you were hoping for? I think it is fair to say that the ad breaks with the theme of previous marketing work that you've done with the expletives and all that. And yeah, what was the response as well? Was the response what you were expecting and what you were hoping for?

Monica Holmvik Persdotter:

Yeah. Well, the reason why we did this was of course we wanted to inspire, we wanted to inform, we wanted it to be a conversation starter. And we can definitely see that it has become that. We've been live with this campaign for just over a week now, and the response has been amazing. We've had a reach in the 500 millions on numerous digital platforms. We have had so many comments, most of them, very positive, a few which have reacted a little to the language that he uses. But then again, the way that he expresses it also, it's not directed to any one person, it's generic, it's general, but it's also praise in the end for wind power generation. So it's also very connected to the way that we know him as this cultural icon from the Hollywood movies that we've seen in it. So it's very true to him the script that he delivers to us.

And I wanted to add one more thing, and it's about the now question. Why now? And I think that the connection to the actual results of the project that we're working on is a reason why now is when we decided to communicate this. But another thing which is more ... I don't want to say that it's a coincidence, but it just plays well in the time that we're communicating this, is that we can see that earlier there were companies that had a very strong sustainability agenda, which are now retracting. So for the climate movement, we can see that it's been from the comments that we're seeing on the digital platforms, that it's been a real relief for them that there are companies like Vattenfall who are still standing firm in our commitments to becoming fossil free.

Camilla Naschert:

Monica Holmvik Persdotter, thank you so much for joining us on Energy Evolution.

Monica Holmvik Persdotter:

Thank you for having me. Thank you.

Camilla Naschert:

After talking to Monica, I was trying to find out a little bit more about the psychology behind climate and energy communications, and I discovered that there are researchers who studied just that. One of them is David Bidwell, an associate professor of marine affairs at the University of Rhode Island in the US. He is an expert on stakeholder engagement in offshore wind. David, welcome to Energy Evolution.

David Bidwell:

Thank you very much for having me today.

Camilla Naschert:

So you work in the Department of Marine Affairs and you use methods of environmental sociology and social psychology in your research. Can you tell us a little bit more about what that involves and the kinds of questions that you're thinking about? I know some of your recent work has been on public acceptance, for example, around the Block Island Wind Farm, the first in the US.

David Bidwell:

Absolutely. So the Department of Marine Affairs at the University of Rhode Island is a small but mighty department. We work on the social side of ocean and coastal management and policy so we have people from lots of different backgrounds who can address the people problems when it comes to the saltwater coasts and the oceans. My background, I was actually trained as an environmental sociologist. I think most people don't know what that is. But it's just primarily what I do is I use social science methods to understand why people behave the way they do towards the environment or how they form their attitudes or how they experience environmental changes. I was brought to the University of Rhode Island in 2014 as part of an effort on their part to hire people with expertise in ocean renewable energy. And when I arrived was just during the permitting phase for the Block Island Wind Farm, which went on to become the first offshore wind project developed in the United States. And so really since that time, the majority of my research has been focused in the offshore wind space as things have moved forward with some starts and pauses here in the United States.

Camilla Naschert:

Yeah. Starts and pauses are a big theme when it comes to offshore wind policy in the US. We've heard President Donald Trump's views on the technology. He argues around negative impact on wildlife like whales. He argues around visual impact, but also around it being more expensive than fossil fuels. Proponents on the other hand are of course pointing to climate benefits, but even also lower bills. What have you learned about the factors that drive and influence public acceptance or disapproval of offshore wind farms?

David Bidwell:

Yeah. That's a great question. When we first started doing this work, and we were really looking a lot at the Block Island Wind Farm, which is three miles off the coast of Rhode Island, which is where we are located, it was a great laboratory for us to understand what are people thinking about offshore wind? And so when I would tell people that's what I did is that I studied people's attitude towards offshore wind, they would say, "Well, what do people think?" And I would say, "Well, they think a lot of things." There are a lot of factors that lead to whether people support or oppose or are somewhere in the middle, which I think is actually probably most people around this technology. But one of the things that I would always add is that what we were learning during that time ... This is 2015, 2016, 2017, is that a lot of people simply didn't have an attitude or a very well-developed opinion about things. There were a lot of people who were very unaware of the industry about its impacts, about its effects, and most of the public hadn't really heard very much about it.

When we started out during that time, what we would find is 70 to 80% of people in our samples would be positive about offshore wind with a small number of people being against it. We've seen that change a lot over time. I can tell you a few things of some of the things that influence people's attitudes towards offshore wind. And I think about this in being in the rational and the non-rational world. So on the rational side where people are really thinking about what are the impacts, what are the effects that we see. On the positive side, people who are supportive of offshore wind tend to think about the opportunities to lower carbon emissions as being a big benefit.

They might talk about the feeling like this is a new industry and a way of creating economic development in terms of jobs and some of the things that go along with that. Whereas people who are less interested or have less support for the industry might be looking at whether there are going to be impacts to wildlife, how it affects the visual landscape and what they see on the ocean. But one of the things that we know from the research is that there are a lot of these non-rational things that go into people's decision making as well, which is what are people's underlying values? What are the groups that they belong to, what's the symbolism that they place behind the industry? And those things can lead to a lot in terms of the attitudes that people form about the industry or about specific projects.

Camilla Naschert:

Symbolism is interesting to me. Can you explain why offshore wind has such strong symbolism and is such a ... Yeah as you almost described, like a marker of affiliation. Why do people feel so strongly about it?

David Bidwell:

Yeah. It's funny. When you work on renewable energy projects or you work in the field, I think you start to be sensitized to all of the imagery that you see in commercials and in newspapers and illustrations, even on children's drinking cups and things, you'll see wind turbines. Because I think among a certain class of people or a certain group of people, what is that this idea of wind turbines is symbolic of progress towards a more modern world or certainly a more environmentally friendly world. And we've done some surveys where we ask people what their responses are to wind turbines. And one of the things that we hear, particularly from people who are supporters, is that they really see the wind turbines as being symbolic of this move towards green energy or a more environmentally sustainable future.

For people who are more on the opposition side, we might see where there is a strong bond to the ocean as a wild place, as a place that is free from human intervention. And they may see offshore wind as being an industrialization of the ocean or a privatization of the ocean by leasing areas of the ocean for private development. And so you can really get these opposing viewpoints. I think also within our current political climate, which has a lot of political polarization, there's a lot of symbolism about who supports environmental efforts and who doesn't. And so you get this social belonging or social identity element as well as to whether you support or you oppose these kinds of projects.

Camilla Naschert:

That's really interesting. And getting back to Block Island, this first offshore wind farm that was commissioned in the US, what was it that ended up bringing people on site? Is it the sense of a win-win for the local community and the developer, a sense of trust that this is going to be fine? What was it in the end?

David Bidwell:

So there were a number of factors I think that led towards the success of the Block Island project, which was completed in 2016 and made it the first "steel in the water" in the United States. So one is it's a very small scale project, it's five turbines and 30 megawatts. So it does have this sense of being a pilot project and something that we're going to build and monitor and see how effective it is and see what the impacts are. So I think some people were willing to give it a try. I do also think that in Rhode Island we're a small state. There was a sense of pride in being the first place that something happened. And then I think there were a lot of interesting factors in terms of the process that was used to develop this wind farm that really led to it being the first successful effort in the United States.

So one is that the process to develop it actually started with a two-year process that was centered here at the University of Rhode Island at our Coastal Resources Center. And this was before I arrived at the university, but I know people who were involved and it was called the Ocean Special Area Management Plan. And what they did was actually bring in people who were users of the ocean space, advocates of the ocean space, involved in energy policy, etc. And brought them together to figure out what were the important questions that they really wanted to know the answers to and then did their best to collect the most up-to-date information that was there. And I think that process did a lot in building support within the state and within the community for getting to that development.

Now, there were some other factors that were very important in terms of building support, particularly for people who live on the island. And this wind farm is only three miles, about five kilometers off the coast of the island. So it's actually very close, much closer than the other projects that we're talking about here in the United States, or really most of the projects in Europe as well. And one of those things was that they're just getting back to the process idea is that they really did hire a local person to act as a liaison between the company and between the members of the public. And then also just the nature of the company, the identity of the company that developed that project, which was a company called Deepwater Wind was a local company.

It was viewed as being a Rhode Island company, and that the people who worked on it were local. So there was a sense of this was something that we were doing. There are some other factors too, in terms of the island receiving some very specific benefits. So at the time that the project was built, they made all of their electricity by burning diesel oil in generators. The wind farm actually brought to the island a more reliable form of electricity. It eliminated some of the impacts there on the island in terms of noise and air pollution, etc. And also brought with it some benefits that weren't related to the energy itself, which is that the cable that brings the excess from the block Island Wind farm into the mainland grid also included a fiber optics cable that brought high-speed internet to the island for the first time. So there were some very concrete benefits as well as some other procedural elements that made that project successful.

Camilla Naschert:

David, you've also studied the influence of media on public perception around offshore wind. What did you find there?

David Bidwell:

Yeah. For the last couple of years, we've been involved in a research project, myself and some of my colleagues here at the university trying to understand communications and engagement around the two first large-scale offshore wind projects that were completed in the US, which were here in the Northeast. So that's the South Fork Wind Farm and Vineyard Wind Farm, which is still under construction, but it was one of the first large projects that were completed. And so we've been looking at several different things around the media landscape, the communications landscape, including what a lot of people call misinformation and then also public engagement in the project as well. And one of the things that we've found, at least in terms of media coverage is that media coverage has really been dominated by the private companies who are developing these projects as well as some of the federal agencies that are involved in it. But we've seen less coverage over the years, at least during the development of those projects around local voices and local concerns. But I will say we've also looked at where there are positive and negative messages that we've seen in the media as well. And by and large, a lot of the coverage has been positive, but not all of it.

When people talk about positive messages with the wind farm developments, they often talk a lot about some of these economic benefits. Very often the advantages are framed in terms of jobs development, et cetera, whereas some of the negative stories are much more focused on some of the perceived impacts around wildlife, the environment, and concerns about those more local impacts.

Camilla Naschert:

Now currently, the picture for new projects in the US is looking a lot more challenging due to this moratorium that was put in place by the current administration. And I wonder what you think these next four or so years will bring for the industry? Is it being choked off just as it was about to get started?

David Bidwell:

So I want to make a couple of points about the current environment. So one is that offshore wind development in the United States has not come to a halt yet. There are projects that are still in the pipeline and that are under construction, so there are still things that are moving forward here in the States. That said, there have been a lot of problems even before this initial administration came on board. Since starting very slow with the Block Island Wind Farm, a number of states, particularly in the Northeast, have really been pushing very hard for offshore wind development. So what we saw was really an explosion in the number of projects that were in the pipeline. And when the pandemic hit in 2020 and we started to have global supply chain issues, that really caused some disruptions within the industry that had created some problems at that point. And then as well, things around interest rates, inflation, etc. Had really changed some of the economics leading some of the companies who had committed to these projects to back out of them. So there were some problems there. But yet we still had a very healthy pipeline of projects moving forward.

Now, we've been in a very different environment over the past. I guess at this point it's six months around the new administration, and this gets into some of those things that I talked about in terms of symbolism and populism and some of the responses here in terms of backlash on the support of the project. And I think to some degree we can lay some of the blame for these problems at the feet of some of the things that we've learned from our communications project, which is some of our preliminary results really point to a lack of trusted sources of information about the industry. A lot of people who have been unhappy or dissatisfied with the way some of the engagement and decision-making has worked with these larger projects, which are really led mostly by larger multinational companies. And really feeling like there is this pressure to move forward with the projects without really listening to local concerns. I think in part what you're seeing now is a backlash that may stem in part from dissatisfaction in the communications realm and some of the opportunities that the lack of trusted information resources have given for misinformation to really flare up and take hold within the public.

Camilla Naschert:

That's really interesting. Now, as an expert on the symbolism and communications around offshore wind and of course I need to ask you about this Vattenfall advertisement that was published a week or two ago. I know you watched it as well. What did you make of it?

David Bidwell:

Well, so I think the first thing that I would say is that no, what you think about offshore wind, I think it's been a pretty heavy environment recently in terms of ... Whether you're pro-wind or anti-wind. I think it's been a lot of very serious conversations, a lot of conflict, a lot of name-calling, et cetera, and it was refreshing to have something with an air of levity to it. I think everybody who I know enjoyed the ad just because of the terrific performance by Samuel L. Jackson. I think most people like Samuel L. Jackson and his way of delivering things. I thought it was a really interesting approach by Vattenfall to try to break through all the noise that is out there regarding offshore wind development and try to get some attention to some positive messages. I think what we've seen is that ... Knowing I was coming on today, I consulted a colleague of mine, Dr. Emily Diamond, who's really an expert on communications, and she said, "We've seen more of the idea of using celebrity voices around offshore wind, and that Samuel L. Jackson is very popular probably to all kinds of audiences." So he's probably not a very polarizing voice. So there may be an opportunity for that ad to grab attention for people who ... Particularly people who maybe weren't paying attention to the issue or who hadn't quite made up their minds about the issue.

Camilla Naschert:

David Bidwell, thank you so much for joining us on Energy Evolution.

David Bidwell:

Thank you so much for having me today. I think it's a very interesting topic. It's going to be very interesting to see what happens over the next few years or decade with the industry.

Taylor Kuykendall:

Thanks, Camilla. What a fascinating little detour in the sociology behind energy policymaking and communications. Now, listeners, that's it from us this week. We hope you enjoyed this. As always, you can stay up to date with upcoming episodes by subscribing to Energy Evolution on your podcast platform of choice. Now. If you have any ideas for guests or topics, you can always email energyevolution@spglobal.com. We'd love to hear from you. I also want to take a moment to recognize the Energy Evolution podcast team, including Eklavya Gupte, Camilla Naschert, Karen Willenbrecht, and Dan Testa, as well as our agency partner, The 199, and the Commodity Insights Digital Content team. We'll be back next week with more Energy Evolution.