Echo Communications Featured in Heatmap News’ Q&A

Echo Vice President Ella Nilsen was featured in Heatmap News’ Q&A:

A CNN Reporter Joins the Fray

A conversation with Ella Nilsen — formerly of CNN, now with Echo Communications — about where we stand in the fight over the energy transition.

By Jael Holzman
August 21, 2026

This week’s conversation is with Ella Nilsen, who recently left CNN as a climate reporter and is now a new vice president at energy and cleantech PR firm Echo Communications. Having worked on Capitol Hill alongside Nilsen, I knew her to be an exceptional reporter who asked hard questions of those in power on all sides. So when I found out she was taking her journalism hat off and putting the comms cap on, I wanted to do something you rarely get to do with one of your reporting peers: ask for her own opinion about where we stand in the fight over the energy transition.

Our chat was lightly edited for clarity.

What’s it like going from CNN and climate journalism to advising on communications in the energy sector, especially when it comes to clean tech in this fraught moment?

So before I covered climate and clean energy, I was a political reporter who covered campaign cycles and Capitol Hill for a while, and I was always interested in the nexus of politics and politics. I tried to make as much of my coverage about that. Politics is policy, and the other way around.

Being on the other side of it is, well, I know from my experience as a reporter what interests them. I’m trying to figure out ways to make sure when I’m bugging you all that the pitch lands, because hopefully it’ll be something people are interested in. Things are changing so fast. It’s a really fascinating time to be a reporter and be in the clean energy comms space.

Okay, but now that you’re in clean energy comms, how do you handicap the fight over developing these technologies? Who is winning, who is losing, and why?

I think it’s tough to call exact winners and losers right now because over the last few months, there have been so many new and interesting developments.

Look at the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition, which has been getting involved in Republican primaries for Freedom Caucus members. There’s been this perception for a long time that the clean energy industry didn’t fare well in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act fight. They had important wins while losing pretty key stuff. But there’s been this interesting reckoning within the industry, and even this last summer, where people are moving the ball forward in interesting ways. They’re trying to get involved in political fights with direct results.

Read the entire story here.