Kyle Sword, business development manager at NSG Pilkington and board member of the National Glass Association, shared his insights about advocacy as a past, and upcoming, attendee of NGA’s Glass & Glazing Advocacy Days, May 14-15.
From Sword’s experience, advocacy is about educating officials and helping them to see the big picture. “It's not looking for a government handout. It's trying to teach people this is really what matters to our industry,” he says.
This interview has been edited for length.
Q. What has been your experience with NGA’s Glass & Glazing Advocacy Days?
A. It's something that I'm glad to see the industry is embracing. Getting the message out there to lawmakers, and generally just a wider audience I think is really important.
Every kid in high school knows what a mechanic and electrician and a plumber is; it’s work trying to teach people what a glazier is. Just teaching people about who we are as an industry, and then what we do and what matters to us, is really important. The more we can do that the better.
Q. What will be your priorities at the event this year?
A. One of the key things that I want to talk about is energy efficiency and high-performance buildings, but that’s really just setting the stage for where the glass industry falls in terms of the solutions that we provide, versus the risks or costs that we have. I think the glass industry is generally seen as an energy consumer, with the perception that the windows are the weak point of the envelope, and so there’s a feeling that the glass industry must be the problem.
And really, the exact opposite is true.
The industry consumes a little bit of energy to make our glass and window products, but the value that they create in terms of saving energy or upgrading existing buildings to higher windows performance, in new construction and in retrofitting existing buildings, is actually an order of magnitude more important than the energy that is consumed in making our products. And that message I don't think is currently out there.
The heat pump industry has billions and billions of dollars pumped into it, so in our education this year, we're trying to talk to people and say, “You can pay a lot of money for heat pumps, but unless your facade is somewhat reasonable [in terms of performance], the heat pump isn't going to help, you're still going to be losing loads of heat.”
Q. Why is advocating for the industry in 2024 important?
A. Advocacy is important in election years, or in years without elections, especially from an educational standpoint. People need to know what’s important to your industry, and why that matters. From a voting standpoint, politicians always care about voters, but it seems like the U.S. is so polarized, so you either have to be on this side or that side.
And a lot of our issues aren't polarizing issues. They're things that I think everyone can get behind; do you want to see skilled trades in the U.S. prosper? Do you want to fix a failing infrastructure? Do you want to see people have jobs so that they can pay for their families? Do you want to make the U.S. more energy independent? The things that really shouldn't be polarizing at all.