Our News

Welcome to our twelfth Common Sense Colloquy , a Q&A with Jason Grumet , president of the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) . We’ve been fortunate to work with Jason and his team on multiple occasions including in support of the launch of the American Energy Innovation Council in 2010 and, more recently, with the launch of the Carbon Capture Coalition in 2018. As President of BPC, Jason works with a team of policy experts on topics as varied as energy, education, health, econ

Time flies when you’re having fun. It’s been four years since I launched RENEW PR on January 23, 2015. Since then, I’ve celebrated each business anniversary by highlighting the people and issues I’ve been fortunate enough to work with and on over the years. In the first two years , I celebrated our business anniversary with an evening reception ( and I even posted my playlist from the second anniversary party ). In the third year, I focused on giving back (with financial co

Hello and welcome back to our Fearless Fridays predictions. Before we offer a new prediction, let’s check in on Volume 3 from March 2018. We predicted: Prediction 5: Instead of a comprehensive infrastructure package addressing a broad range of transportation, manufacturing, energy, environmental and related concerns, we’ll just see one single-issue bill enacted this year (e.g. limited transportation infrastructure language in the FAA reauthorization bill or a bill on transp

Election 2018 was billed as many things, and it delivered in many ways. It was both surprising and expected and dramatic and simple. Its impact on federal energy and environmental policy will be similarly interesting. Here’s a snapshot of our thinking on the impact of the midterm election on the key national topics at the core of our communications consulting business . For each topic, we’ve provided our take on “likely opportunities” and “likely challenges” to share a sense

Welcome to our ninth Common Sense Colloquy, a Q&A with Shelley Fidler , Principal, Governmental Affairs, Energy and Environmental Policy at Van Ness Feldman in Washington, D.C. In addition to being a former Hill colleague and later client partner, Shelley is also a friend of RENEW PR President Ben Finzel. Shelley is that rare combination of smart, focused, friendly and kind. As a result, she is one of the most connected people in the Washington energy and environment publi

Welcome to our sixth Common Sense Colloquy , a Q&A with Bob Perciasepe , the president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) . RENEW PR President Ben Finzel works with Bob and his excellent team on the Carbon Capture Coalition (client). Bob is the very definition of the phrase “a gentleman and a scholar.” In addition to being smart, he is both savvy and personable. Bob’s career includes leadership roles in federal, state and city government as well as the

Welcome to our fourth Common Sense Colloquy , a Q&A with Bill Richardson , the former Congressman, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, former Secretary of Energy and former Governor of New Mexico. RENEW PR President Ben Finzel had the good fortune to work for Governor Richardson twice – as a congressional staffer and as a presidential appointee in the Energy Department. Governor Richardson is many things – a force of nature, a global “fixer” who has hel

Hello and welcome back to our Fearless Fridays predictions. Before we offer a new prediction, let’s check in on Volume 2 from November 2017 . We predicted: Prediction 4: President Trump will "split the difference" on imposing solar tariffs in the pending Solarworld/Suniva solar trade case by imposing a smaller-than-requested tariff that allows him to try to please both sides. In this way, he'll be able to claim that he's going after China and supporting the plaintiffs by i

Welcome to our first Common Sense Colloquy, a Q&A with Marcene Mitchell of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) . Marcene is Global Head of Strategy and Business Development in the Climate Business Department of IFC . We had the privilege of working with Marcene and her team in 2016 on a partnership program designed to help improve linkages between IFC and key energy and environment constituencies. Last month, we reached out to Marcene to get an update on IFC’s climat

Today marks our third year in business. And what a three years it has been. From the optimistic feelings of 2015 to the hopeful caution of 2016 and the wild disappointment of 2017, the world is a vastly different place today than we ever would have imagined when we started on January 23, 2015. While there are certainly many reasons for hope as we begin 2018, there’s also a lot of concern about world peace, the future of American leadership in the world and the state of our en

Hello and welcome back to our Fearless Fridays predictions. Before we offer a new prediction, let’s check in on Volume 1 from August. We predicted: Prediction 1: We’ll see enactment of some form of carbon capture and storage policy by the end of 2017. [Full disclosure: We have a client in this space. This prediction is not based on any “insider” or other knowledge, but is simply a reflection of our insight from following this issue.] Prediction 2: We’ll see a renewed inter

Hello and Happy Friday! With this post, we’re starting a new series of posts on this blog with our “Fearless Friday” predictions about developments in energy and environment policy, communications and/or issues. These predictions will be based on nothing more than our "best guesses" and our insight from 25+ years in Washington and experience working on related issues. That’s a long way of saying we could be way off with some (all?) of them. But that’s the fun, right? Here goe

In the more than two years since we launched the “ Collaborations ” program as part of the RENEW PR team , we’ve been working to tweak the model for maximum effectiveness. Part of that is ensuring we’re working with the right partners. Today we’re announcing a new partner that we’re sure will be a good fit, and not just because of their name: EnviroMedia is a national leader in environmental marketing and communications. The EnviroMedia team has worked with a who’s who of

Shortly after writing a blog post about Our Values in February 2015, I also wrote a blog post about Our Commitments . After Revisiting Our Values last week, I thought it would be helpful to confirm our commitments as well. Although the current administration is apparently still unsure if it will confirm our nation’s commitment to the Paris Agreement, we still believe acknowledging and addressing climate change is important. And that belief informs much of our work and guid

With today’s Executive Order rolling back many Obama-era regulations on climate, clean power and environmental protection, the Trump administration is opening a new front in their so-called “war” on President Obama’s climate change policies. We shouldn’t be surprised: candidate Trump said during the campaign this is what he’d do and he’s doing it. But it’s still jarring given how dramatic the changes will be once the Executive Order is fully implemented: with today’s action,

Today marks the second anniversary of RENEW PR . It’s been a fantastic two years and I’m excited for the next two and many more beyond. On our six-month anniversary, I wrote a blog post about six things I learned in my first six months in business . I just re-read that post and I’m happy to say that they all hold true today. Rather than repeating them, I thought I’d take the occasion of our second anniversary to add two lessons learned since that post in the summer of 2015.

Today we're launching our "new" website, or rather, the second iteration of our website. The new site has clearer titles - Team , Focus , Approach - and a new Clients page listing some of the wonderful organizations we've had the pleasure of working with in the past 19 months. We're also updating many of our case studies, and will soon be adding new ones reflecting work we've done recently. And we've moved our Collaborations to the same page as our Network Partners (the ne

As of today, we've been in business 19 months (we officially launched on January 23, 2015). In that time, we've worked with 19 clients. We're proud to say that several of those clients have worked with us before and many that hired us last year either continued our relationship into this year or hired us again this year for additional projects. To say that we've been lucky would be an understatement. We've been so fortunate to work with smart, committed, capable, focused org

With a name like RENEW PR , you'd think that it was Earth Day every day for us. And it pretty much is. But we're always happy to see worldwide attention focused on the important priorities related to protecting the planet we all call home. Today's signing of the Paris Agreement in New York is a terrific way to mark the day and will be a launching pad for new and continuing conversations about the policies required to balance environmental protection with economic and social

In 2010, I had the distinct honor of working with a team of clients and colleagues (including Renee Rosenfeld of RENEW PR Network Partner Reverberate Media and Kristofer Eisenla of RENEW PR Network Partner LUNA+EISENLA media ) on the launch of the American Energy Innovation Council (AEIC). The AEIC was a group of seven leading CEOs who were committed to promoting the idea that energy innovation required U.S. leadership, specifically U.S. federal dollars devoted to energy