Power takes over the climate conversation

• For corporate affairs leaders overseeing sustainability, this means climate has newfound relevance in the business conversation — and more ways to get lost inside it.

State of play: Throughout this week's Axios House conversations, one thing was clear: Energy has become a constraint on how fast companies can grow.

• "Energy is the most fundamental foundational layer," Nvidia sustainability chief Josh Parker told Axios' Amy Harder. "If you don't have enough energy, you're not going to be able to deploy AI at scale [or] build the next big thing."
• But infrastructure isn't moving at the same speed. Redwood Materials CEO JB Straubel said the timeline for adding grid and transmission capacity is "out of sync" with what hyperscalers and neoclouds want.

• "These two worlds are diverging. The timelines are just different by years, not by months," he told Axios' Mike Allen.

The big picture: "The rapid growth of data centers and scale up of electrification has fused climate and energy together in new ways, and it changes how we talk about both," said Zara Ahmed, COO of climate advisory firm Relae, formerly Carbon Direct.

• Her advice for communicators: Use the new attention on power to make climate more relevant, not less.

Zoom in: Rather than boasting about ambitious decarbonization goals, show where sustainability cuts costs, reduces risk or unlocks growth.

• For example, Hilton uses its scale to offer franchise owners sustainability programs — from energy and water audits to waste reduction, sustainability chief Jean Garris Hand told Axios' Nicholas Johnston, noting utility bills are hotels' second-largest operating expense after labor.
• Delta is on track to use 75 million fewer gallons of jet fuel this year through operational efficiencies, saving more than $200 million, sustainability chief Amelia DeLuca told Axios' Alan Neuhauser.
• "I've actually put a P&L value behind every single piece of our work," she said, from cutting costs today to future-proofing the business and offering sustainability products customers are willing to buy.

Between the lines: Even longtime clean-energy advocate Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) acknowledged the need for a messaging change.

• Asked why Democrats' latest economic agenda puts less emphasis on the word "climate" than previous efforts, he said leaders need to "meet the American people where they are." "Right now where they are is everything is too expensive," he told Harder.
• The affordability focus isn't necessarily a retreat from climate issues, argued Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii). "As a person who prioritizes climate first, when I go home to talk to folks, that doesn't mean the first thing I say is climate," he said in an interview with Axios' Ben Geman.
• "I think we should talk about climate in the context of people not being able to afford their lives."

Reality check: Shifting climate into the language of affordability and grid reliability risks minimizing the challenges.

• Despite personally caring deeply about sustainability, Straubel said "climate is certainly a footnote" in many of his conversations with customers, partners and policymakers. "It keeps me up at night," he said.

Some organizations are being more thoughtful when and where climate comes up.

• "We lead with health and the taste of the food," said Maggie Baird, founder of Support + Feed, an NGO tackling food insecurity through plant-based meals. "We do not find it effective to start in the deep end," she told Geman.
• But its educational campaigns — including activations at music festivals and work tied to Baird's children, Billie Eilish and Finneas — connect more explicitly to climate change.

The bottom line: Climate change used to motivate conversations about future energy systems, but that's flipped. The huge AI-fueled demand for energy is now forcing companies to rethink how they talk about climate.