The energy world is trashing its old lobbying playbook under Trump 2.0.
This administration — even more than Trump 1.0 — prioritizes loyalty from industry officials and the lobbyists who represent them, according to energy advocates who were granted anonymity to discuss their tactics. That means overhauling their strategies as they try to woo Trump officials and convince them that they fit into the president’s “energy dominance” agenda.
Energy industries are increasingly turning to firms known for their close ties to the current Trump team. Lobbyists are training their focus on the White House, where insiders say much of the decisionmaking authority on energy is concentrated. And K Streeters are urging clients to be careful about what they say about the president or his policies on social media or through trade associations, because, they say, this White House is watching closely.
POLITICO’s E&E News spoke to nine people who lobby on energy or work at businesses that lobby on energy for this story.
For industries looking to lobby the administration, “this is something just completely and utterly different than they’ve ever experienced,” said one energy lobbyist. “Companies are used to a lot of deference, and that’s not the case with the Trump administration,” that person said. “That shock to the system is something I don’t think anyone’s gotten over yet.”
The popularity of consulting firms and lobby shops in Washington has long been tied to whoever occupies the White House, and the Trump era is no exception. Democrats have benefited from that partisan swing in power too. Hot commodities during the Biden administration included Ricchetti Inc., founded by former President Joe Biden’s longtime aide Steve Ricchetti, and Democratic public affairs firm SKDK.
“President Trump’s only priority is doing what is best for the American people, and that means unleashing energy dominance to lower costs and strengthen our energy independence,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said. “The Trump Administration’s loyalty is to the American people, not outside lobbyists.”
Flocking to Trump-tied firms
A little more than a year into Trump’s second term, some of K Street’s big winners in the energy arena are becoming apparent.
“Companies are placing a higher importance on politically connected lobbyists in this administration,” said a second energy lobbyist.
Ballard Partners — whose alumni include White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Attorney General Pam Bondi — has seen its fortunes soar in Trump’s second term as clients have rushed to the Trump-linked firm following the president’s 2024 win.
They included Qcells, a South Korea-based solar company that stood to benefit from the Biden-era renewable energy incentives.
During the Biden years, Qcells stocked up on prominent Democratic in-house lobbyists: former senior Biden aide and ex-Fox Corp. lobbyist Danny O’Brien; and Joe Mendelson, a former Tesla lobbyist who served as Democrats’ chief climate counsel on the Senate’s top environmental committee.
In June 2025, Qcells hired Ballard as a lobbyist, federal disclosures show. Ballard lobbied the White House, federal agencies and both chambers of Congress on Qcells’ behalf in 2025 on energy tax credits and shipbuilding.
O’Brien left Qcells in January 2026 and Qcells’ contract with Ballard ended in December 2025, said Qcells spokesperson Marta Stoepker.
Other energy companies that have signed on as Ballard’s clients since Trump’s win include Chevron, Terra Solar, Bloom Energy and Constellation Energy. Ballard also terminated its lobbying for Terra Solar last year.
Trump has been “personally focused on energy policy from day one,” said Justin Sayfie, a partner at Ballard Partners. And the creation of Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council, he added, has “stimulated a lot of interest from stakeholders in the energy industry on the future of energy policy in the United States.”
Ballard has “been honored and humbled to serve as many clients in the energy industry as we can,” Sayfie said. “We bring an intimate understanding of the energy policy goals of this administration to our clients, and we advise our clients to support the administration’s energy policy goals and to become partners with the administration on achieving the policies that this administration is moving forward on.”
David Bernhardt, who served as Trump’s Interior secretary in the first term, launched a new lobbying firm in 2025 that’s stacked with ex-Trump officials and has signed on energy and mining clients.
Longtime GOP insider Jeff Miller launched Miller Strategies after serving as a top political aide to Rick Perry before Perry was appointed Energy secretary in Trump’s first term.
Miller Strategies has also been piling up clients since Trump’s 2024 victory. Those include Edison Electric Institute, General Motors, Invenergy and NuScale Power.
EEI hired Miller Strategies during the tax bill process, a spokesperson for the trade group said in an email. The firm terminated its lobbying for EEI last year.
CGCN’s new energy clients in 2025 include rooftop solar developer Solar Landscape, EnergySource Minerals and the geothermal energy company XGS Energy. CGCN also ended its lobbying for Solar Landscape last year, the reports show.
CGCN CEO Mike Catanzaro served as a senior White House energy and environmental official during the first Trump administration.
“The old, standard playbook of lobbying is dead,” Catanzaro said. “It doesn’t work in an ever-shifting political landscape, affected by constant changes in partisan control, regulations, court decisions, legislation and media. Our approach is to help clients deal with any eventuality that may arise, and that means covering every aspect of client needs, which we’ve done: strategic communications, policy and regulatory consulting, lobbying, and analytics.”
BGR Group — a bipartisan firm whose alumni include Trump Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy — registered to lobby for renewable energy company Ørsted, BP America and Eclipse Metals in 2025.
Eclipse Metals, an Australian critical-minerals developer advancing a rare-earth project in Greenland “engaged advisers in Washington to deepen our engagement with the U.S. government and pursue partnership opportunities that support stronger non-Chinese sources of critical minerals,” Eclipse Metals Executive Chair Carl Popal said in an email.
‘Not on the team’
Loyalty to the administration is viewed as key to getting access in Trump 2.0.
“There’s definitely an awareness of folks who are not on the team,” the first energy lobbyist said.
“It’s taken everybody a while to figure out who’s got insight into the second-term guys,” that lobbyist said. “There are fewer people who are plugged into official Washington in the second term.”
The White House has more control over energy issues than ever before, a third lobbyist said.
“You have to work the full spectrum from top to bottom all at the same time. If you could sell an agency, it doesn’t mean the [National Energy Dominance Council] or the White House is sold on it,” that person said.
It’s also important that clients scour their social media accounts and public letters they’ve signed on to that might be critical of the president or his policies, the third lobbyist said.
“It’s very, very important, I think. This administration watches those items more than ever before,” that person said.
Avoiding criticisms of the people in power on social media isn’t a novel concept for businesses, Ballard’s Sayfie said.
“Any sophisticated Washington stakeholder understands that if you’re going in to meet with the mayor of Peoria, it’s Politics 101 that you’re not going to have a good meeting if you told the world that the mayor of Peoria is not a good mayor,” Sayfie said.
Lobbyists are also looking for ways to align clients’ missions with the administration’s policy agenda.
“We try to find those areas of overlap or to characterize the policy goals of our clients in a way that is supportive of the administration’s policy goals,” Sayfie said. “If there’s something that is completely antithetical to the administration, we’ll tell a client that — or a prospective client that — from the get-go.”
POLITICO’s parent company, Axel Springer, was a Ballard Partners client for less than two months in 2025.
Contact Kevin Bogardus on Signal at KevinBogardus.89.
