---
type: fragment
date: '2026-04-13T00:00:00.000Z'
title: Narrative Infrastructure
description: Why climate tech keeps treating narrative as a bolt-on while incumbents built it like infrastructure.
slug: infrastructure
isArtifactItem: true
excerpt: One side built communication as an operating system. The other still treats it as something to bolt on after the product works.
thumbnailMedia: infrastructure_1a.webp
ogImage: infrastructure_1a.webp
---

In 1998, a coalition backed by the American Petroleum Institute put together a strategic communications plan. The stated goal was "victory will be achieved when average citizens understand uncertainties in climate science."[^1] It had a budget, named tactics, trained spokespeople, and market-by-market rollout plans. It looked like an operations manual, because that is what it was.

The industry treated public perception as infrastructure. API spent hundreds of millions with PR agencies over the following decade.[^2] BP dropped $200 million on a single rebrand.[^3] Across three decades, major oil companies poured billions into shaping how people talked and thought about energy.[^4] They understood something climate tech still struggles to admit: how people talk and feel about a technology helps determine what they do about it.

There is still no equivalent effort in climate tech. A recent survey of 58 climate startups found companies asking a city government to help with visibility and credibility.[^5] Founders still say demos beat marketing, that the technology should speak for itself, that once the product works the story will follow. That belief sounds principled. It has never been historically true.

[infrastructure_1a.webp@2](https://storage.u29dc.com/media/infrastructure_1a.webp@2)

Technology does not speak for itself. It speaks inside narratives, institutions, repetition, and trust. Fossil fuel incumbents understood that early and staffed for it. Climate companies keep treating communication as commentary on the real work, something to layer on after the engineering is finished, if time and budget allow.

> One side built communication as an operating system. The other still treats it as something to bolt on after the product works.

That asymmetry is not cosmetic. If one side builds narrative capacity into the business and the other treats it as polish, the better-funded story shapes public patience, policy time horizons, and what people come to see as plausible. Narrative does not replace product, policy, or deployment. It sets the conditions those things have to move through.

Three decades of policy delay did not happen because one side had better facts. They happened because one side took perception seriously enough to organise around it, fund it, and run it continuously. The other still treats narrative as optional, which means it keeps arriving late to a fight that was always partly about meaning.

If climate tech wants faster adoption, it has to stop treating communication as decoration around deployment. For contested technologies, communication is part of the deployment stack. Narrative is infrastructure.

[^1]: [Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1676446-global-climate-science-communications-plan-1998/) (1998), API-linked strategy document.

[^2]: Center for Public Integrity, [_When Lobbying Becomes PR_](https://time.com/3668128/lobbying-advertising-public-relations/) (2015). API paid Edelman $327 million from 2008-2012.

[^3]: NBER, [_The Value of a Green Reputation_](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w19838/revisions/w19838.rev0.pdf) (2013). BP's "Beyond Petroleum" campaign budget and brand-awareness impact.

[^4]: Robert J. Brulle, [_Corporate Promotion and Climate Change_](https://wp.comminfo.rutgers.edu/maronczyk/wp-content/uploads/sites/178/2020/03/Brulle2019_Article_CorporatePromotionAndClimateCh.pdf) (2019). Five major US oil companies spent $3.6 billion on corporate-promotion advertising from 1986-2015.

[^5]: City of Boston, [_Emerging Climate Tech RFI Summary_](https://content.boston.gov/sites/default/files/file/2025/04/Emerging%20Climate%20Tech%20RFI%20Summary%2C%20April%202025_3.pdf) (2025). 58 climate startups surveyed on scaling barriers.

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