FAQs

ClimateVoice is a nonprofit that leverages the power of employees and corporate influence to win crucial policy battles. 

We help employees activate their collective power by offering toolkits, education, and campaign resources. Our goal is to turn employee values into corporate action that advances ambitious climate policy.

ClimateVoice equips you with the resources to confidently raise climate issues at work. As an employee, you have a lot of influence within your company, and companies have a lot of power in policy. You can exert an outsized impact when you raise your voice about climate at work. However, employees often don’t realize this lever is available to them, and when they do, it can be daunting to act without a playbook and without fellow colleagues to collaborate with. 

Start by building a coalition with your coworkers and using our Climate Action Checklist and Employee Climate Action Toolkit. We provide clear action steps, advice, best practices, education, ideas, inspiration, and the resources you need to get started on advocating for climate policy progress at work. Key steps:

• Understand your obstacles: get the facts and do your research.
• Engage your coworkers: build community by having conversations with colleagues and leaders.
• Find your influence: then start advocating for action.
• Bring in a coach: schedule a 30-minute coaching session with a ClimateVoice team member. We’ll arrange a session 1:1 or for a group of interested employees to help get your workplace advocacy kicked off and destined for success.

Companies can encourage advocacy by protecting policies like civic engagement time, providing safe spaces for dialogue, rewarding values-driven leadership, and sanctioning and funding green teams. ClimateVoiceguides employees on how to push for these internal support structures.

Companies should go beyond operational emissions and engage in public policy. Companies can lead on climate policy action by lobbying for ambitious climate legislation, backing state-level policies, and reforming their trade associations to align with net-zero goals.

Companies can live up to their “green” reputations by:

• Lobbying for bold and just climate policies at the federal, state, and local levels.
• Stopping any lobbying against climate policy progress.
• Making strong public statements in support of climate policy progress.
• Leaving the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable over their anti-climate positions.
• Leading or joining pro-climate coalitions to advocate for strong, pro-climate policies.

Companies need to think about the policies needed by every region they operate in – every city, county, state, and country – for that region to decarbonize. A company might be focused on energy policy because buying clean energy is the key thing they need to do to make their own net-zero goals. But their employees, and customers, and suppliers all use transportation – which makes transportation policy (transit, EVs, etc.) relevant to the company.

Companies continue to exert significant influence on climate policy through their trade associations or through direct lobbying. Companies also exert influence through political donations and additional business group affiliations at local, state, federal and international levels. The opportunity for greater influence on climate policy is for companies to clearly connect their sustainability work and values to the larger societal objective that work is in service of and lobby hard enough to counter the obstruction coming from defenders of the status quo.

Yes. Trade associations remain extremely influential in shaping national and global climate policy. Groups such as the Business Roundtable and U.S. Chamber of Commerce have used their lobbying power to oppose key environmental regulations, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s climate disclosure rules, new pollution standards, EPA power plant regulations, and the clean energy investments in the Inflation Reduction Act.

To demonstrate leadership and pro-climate corporate advocacy, companies can publicly call on the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to lobby for climate-aligned policy.

We need all companies – and especially companies who have conducted trade association audits and definitively confirmed lobbying misalignment – to speak up more often and more forcefully in support of climate policy solutions. Silence on trade association obstruction and misalignment is complicity with climate policy obstruction.

ClimateVoice recommends companies audit their trade association memberships, assess political action committee (PAC) contributions, and ensure their lobbying activities match their climate commitments. This prevents reputational risk and ensures credibility.

The International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN), representing more than $18 trillion in assets, recommends full disclosure of lobbying activities, and disclosure of political contributions of $10,000 or more as best practice. Several more companies have begun producing reports assessing alignment between company positions on climate change and the positions and lobbying activities of their key trade associations.

According to the AAA Framework for Climate Policy Leadership, the following are three essential actions to execute a science-based climate policy agenda:

1. Advocate for policies consistent with achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
2. Align your trade associations’ climate policy advocacy with the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.
3. Allocate advocacy spending to advance climate policies, not obstruct them.

The first step is transparency – mapping dues, positions, and influence. If a trade group opposes climate progress, companies can push for reform, publicly distance themselves, or exit. ClimateVoice’s “Escape the Chamber” initiative highlights examples.

Urge your company to conduct a thorough trade association audit using established guidelines like the Engagement Sheet from Planet Tracker, which has suggested questions to ask your company’s leaders.

Companies such as Unilever and Microsoft who both recently conducted trade association audits deserve credit for taking this important step. However, what companies are doing to immediately address misalignment is the most important outcome of an audit.

Companies and employees should take note in particular of the resulting actionable outcomes of these recent trade association audits, and aim to follow best practices demonstrated in Unilever’s trade association analysis. According to Unilever’s report, the company reviews its membership of industry associations on an annual basis and is committed to conducting a full, global industry association review every three years. Most importantly, the report explicitly calls for action, urging “our most influential industry associations to be more actively engaged in promoting outcomes and policies that can help the economy – and Unilever – to decarbonize faster,” and for trade associations to “work constructively with policymakers to implement policies that will deliver real emissions reductions.” Unilever is also advocating for policy action including nature protections, support for renewable energy and carbon pricing as part of its new Climate Transition Action Plan.

Employees can launch internal campaigns by drafting open letters, gathering signatures, and requesting leadership meetings. We provide templates, case studies, and escalation strategies to make employee led campaigns more effective.

• Get colleagues motivated and engaged. Consider how you can communicate why this issue should matter to them, what they need to know, and what kind of power they have to make a difference on this issue.
• Employee-to-employee organizing can make workers feel good and feel proud that they’re not just fighting for their own company to support climate policy. They’re also helping build worker power overall to create an expectation for corporations to actively advocate for climate policy.
• Think systematically about your desired ends and the means it will take to get there.

Do it, right now. Recognize and seize your power. Employees have immense power over how their companies operate, and a direct line to senior leaders like CEOs to advocate for change from within. Use it, and get organized. The more people you draw into your movement, the harder you will be to ignore. And make it fun! Give people a reason to keep coming back.

• Guilt by Trade Association – This ClimateVoice scorecard shows how 20 U.S. based companies are undermining their sustainability commitments by obstructing climate progress. We help employees translate these insights into action inside their workplaces.
• F Minus is using its revolutionary database of state-level lobbyists for upstream and midstream oil, gas, and coal interests to demonstrate the extent to which these lobbyists are also representing people, schools, communities, and businesses being harmed by the climate crisis.
• The Global Standard on Responsible Climate Lobbying is an investor-led disclosure standard. It is designed to improve transparency around companies’ climate lobbying governance, management and practice.
• GRI Corporate Lobbying Impacts: stakeholder demands for transparency
• InfluenceMap’s LobbyMap database provides objective evidence-based analysis and scores of how major companies and industry associations are influencing climate policy. LobbyMap is a world-renowned platform that holds the corporate sector accountable for climate performance. It covers over 1,000 companies and 350 industry associations globally, with specific platforms for the US, EU, and India. Assessments are fact-checked against science-based benchmarks, such as the IPCC recommendations, to identify alignment or misalignment with the Paris Agreement goals. 
• OpenSecrets – government-mandated lobbying disclosure reports
• PlanetTracker – Climate Transition Mismatch for Corporates & Trade Associations

ClimateVoice collaborates with partners like InfluenceMap and F-Minus to track company behavior through various scorecards. One example is our Guilt By Trade Association scorecard – that shows how 20 U.S. based companies are undermining their sustainability commitments by obstructing climate progress. ClimateVoice helps employees translate these insights into action inside their workplaces.

Employee-led letters show peers, executives, the board, investors, customers, and media outlets that climate matters across the workforce. When companies in turn make public comments on a climate issue, it signals seriousness to lawmakers and trade associations, often influencing policy outcomes.

71% of US employees surveyed believe they have the power to make changes in society – and leadership appears to be listening. In its 2023 CxO Sustainability Report, Deloitte found more than half of C-suite executives saying employee activism on climate had led their organizations to increase sustainability actions over the past year; 24% said it led to a “significant” increase.

If you have an existing or are interested in starting a green team at your place of work, seek an executive sponsor and work with them to secure a source of funding. ClimateVoice convened employees from top companies to share success stories in a 2024 Webinar.

Seek an executive sponsor and secure funding. ClimateVoice convenes employee groups to share success stories.

Once your working group has a proposal ready, set up a meeting with the executive decision-maker or influencer. Send the proposal in advance and create summary material for the discussion. You could also consider drafting a letter on behalf of the employee network you built and gathering signatures. If constructively worded, this can be valuable supplementary material to help get the meeting and be taken seriously. Persistence is the key to success. Getting a commitment to change will likely take more than just one meeting.

In our Employee Action At Work Guide, ClimateVoice founder Bill Weihl — a corporate sustainability veteran and someone previously in the Chief Sustainability Officer seat — has weighed in on the common responses you may hear from executives on why companies don’t want to, shouldn’t, or can’t do more on climate policy. Read through these rebuttals to help you prepare for this crucial conversation.

We recommend equipping executives with clear policy briefings, aligning them with peer companies, and encouraging them to use their voices publicly. We also can provide advisory sessions when leadership has questions or needs guidance.

Sustainability is good for business, which is why many companies have set net-zero targets, developed climate transition plans, and disclosed their emissions. While they often are focused on their internal operations, it is also necessary for them to recognize that decarbonizing the economy at scale will require public policy. Most companies -need public policy to achieve their own operational decarbonization goals, so there is a strong business case for climate advocacy. 

Framing climate as an economic opportunity, tying it to business risk management, and aligning with industry peers helps reduce backlash. We provide talking points to make these messages resonate.

Corporate leaders can also focus climate policy advocacy around the broader understanding of the important task of mitigating climate-related financial and material risks – which are ever-present regardless of who controls the political narratives at any given time.

You can ask leadership to disclose the company’s lobbying spend, PAC contributions, and trade association memberships. ClimateVoice provides example emails and support to help you keep the pressure constructive and effective. Companies such as Unilever and Microsoft who both recently conducted trade association audits deserve credit for taking this important step. However, what companies are doing to immediately address misalignment is the most important outcome of an audit.

ClimateVoices inaugural Bill Weihl Award winners provide examples of how individuals can successfully “advocate for climate policy, both inside their company and in organizing their peers.” Fiona Duggan won the Climate Policy Hero Award in 2024 for her work leading Unilever’s first Climate Policy Engagement Review (CPER) to assess whether the policy positions of their trade associations were aligned with Unilever’s climate policies. In cases where the audit found misalignment, the company pledged to work with trade groups to shift their policy stances with the option to exit if the associations did not change. InfluenceMap, a global think tank, gave Unilever’s Climate Policy Engagement Review a 100% score in 2024 for accuracy and robustness. 

Van Riker was honoured with the Climate Action at Work Award in 2024 for spearheading a campaign urging Microsoft to leave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and to lead on climate policy. He educated his peers about the U.S. Chamber’s long history of climate obstruction and organized colleagues through Microsoft’s global employee network. Van recruited fellow employees to sign an Escape the Chamber petition and this collective action helped spur Microsoft to conduct a public audit of its trade association memberships.

Ceres organizes investors and companies whereas InfluenceMap provides analysis on corporate climate policy engagement. ClimateVoice is unique in mobilizing employees as change agents inside companies. Together, these efforts create a stronger collaborative push for climate policy alignment.

ClimateVoice provides employees with free consultations, corporate scorecards, external research and watchdog reports. These tools reveal whether companies’ lobbying aligns with their public climate pledges and helps employees translate these insights into action inside their workplaces.