Echo Communications in Inside Climate News

Chris Moyer, founder and president of Echo Communications Advisors, was quoted in Inside Climate News following the passage of the Republican megabill.

Inside Climate News: On Senate Floor, Tillis Offered Inside Look Into the Lobbying Against Clean Energy

By Marianne Lavelle
July 2, 2025

Sen. Thom Tillis had cast off any election worries by the time he took to the Senate floor this week to provide a rare window into the lobbying that already is slowing down the U.S. transition to cleaner energy sources. The North Carolina Republican announced Sunday that he would not seek a third six-year term in Congress, “navigating the political theatre and partisan gridlock in Washington.” The decision freed him to break cleanly with his party and oppose the sprawling megabill into which the GOP had stuffed President Donald Trump’s full agenda, including putting the brakes on a transition away from fossil fuels.

The Senate voted 51-50 Tuesday to advance the legislation, with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie, and after an all-night session of political arm-twisting, the House was expected to vote Thursday to send the “Big Beautiful Bill Act” to the president’s desk.

[…]

“The One Big Beautiful Bill Act has already devastated our business,” one community solar and battery storage company executive told the clean energy lobbying firm Echo Communications. The executive, who wanted to remain anonymous, laid out in the firm’s “Echo Chamber” blog how his company’s finance partners withdrew their backing the day after the House version of the megabill passed.

“Because the OBBB so catastrophically and retroactively changed the rules of the game, our lenders couldn’t be sure we could sell the projects we were developing,” the official said. “As a result, they understandably couldn’t extend additional capital.”

The executive said the firm has had to lay off more than 90 percent of its workers as a result. Only a month ago, its plan was to double in size over the next 18 months. “Those were good, high-paying jobs that Congress destroyed overnight,” the executive said.

The story illustrates that the debate in Washington is not just about the wind and solar industry losing federal dollars. It is about losing the surety that the nation is on a steady path to an energy transition where cleaner sources will overtake the deeply entrenched and well-capitalized sources that are pumping dangerous carbon pollution into the atmosphere.

“The larger issue is the extreme careening of federal policy in the United States,” said Chris Moyer, the founder of Echo Communications and a former Democratic staffer on Capitol Hill who now advises clean energy companies. “There’s no consideration of the business cycle. It’s all about the political cycle.”

Read the entire story here.