Left-leaning environmental activists in California are suddenly pouring millions of dollars into an obscure entity known as Energy Foundation China.
The foundation also happens to be registered in California. These donations that have been brought to light by Big Green, a project of the Institute for Energy Research, deserve more scrutiny. That is, especially now that the Biden administration is pushing renewable energy initiatives that benefit Chinese manufacturers.
The foundation describes itself as “a professional grant-making charitable organization” that is “dedicated to China’s sustainable energy development.” Financially, the foundation packs a wallop providing financial support to 2,893 projects through 760 grantees in China, totaling more than $330 million as of 2019. In its latest update pulled from 2018 tax filings, Big Green finds that $14.25 million flowed from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation based in Menlo Park, California, into Energy Foundation China. But there was a pit stop in San Francisco at another left-wing grant-making institution known as the Energy Foundation.
The Institute for Energy Research, which favors policies that enable domestic energy production for the United States, has its eye on the money trail.
“The Energy Foundation appears to receive money from organizations like the Hewlett Foundation and passes it through to Energy Foundation China so that it doesn’t show on Hewlett’s tax documents directly,” IER explained in a press release. But the funds from the Hewlett Foundation are only a small part of the equation. All told, Big Green has exposed $5.7 billion in grants from well-endowed foundations similar to Hewlett into environmental pressure groups that lobby for anti-industry regulations, taxpayer-subsidized renewable energy initiatives, and costly climate change litigation.
The database flushes out details about the grant-maker, the grant recipient, and the stated purpose of each grant on a state-by-state basis. The grants that flow indirectly into Energy Foundation China from other U.S.-based foundations provide additional insight into how elaborate the “Big Green” network has become at the expense of America’s free market system.
How so?
Well, the Biden administration is pursuing wind and solar energy projects and potential electric vehicle mandates. Since China has the corner on rare earth minerals used to manufacture renewable energy, there’s an obvious problem. President Joe Biden could put the U.S. in a position in which it must rely on Chinese supply chains. This is tragic because it was only back in 2019 that the U.S. became energy independent for the first time in 62 years — meaning energy production in the U.S. exceeded consumption on an annual basis. This was not the result of mere happenstance but of deliberate public policy decisions that enabled hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling to boost oil and natural gas production.
We might now lose these advantages.
Environmental activists who have pursued a variety of legal, legislative, and political strategies to constrain U.S. energy have several key allies in the Biden White House. One is Gina McCarthy, a national climate adviser who previously served as former President Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency director and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a New York-based group that rings the bell where grants are concerned. In 2018, the NRDC received 11 grants totaling roughly $4.7 million that included $500,000 for the NRDC’s China energy program, according to Big Green.
We should demand greater transparency of where and why money is flowing to Chinese interests at the expense of U.S. energy independence.
Kevin Mooney (@KevinMooneyDC) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is an investigative reporter in Washington, D.C., who writes for several national publications.
