Fueling the Opposition

How fossil fuel interests are fighting to kill wind and solar farms before they are built

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Energy and Policy Institute (EPI) has been working for more than ten years to research and document how fossil fuel interests are fighting to block new wind and solar farms by spreading disinformation about clean energy to try to undermine the strong, bipartisan support for renewable energy that exists among the public. 

In this report, EPI reviews and summarizes key findings from this research in one place for the first time. We identify some of the major players involved in disinformation campaigns targeting renewable energy projects and technologies, including: 

  • Funders from the coal, petroleum, and methane gas industries; 
  • Networks of front groups and political operatives paid by these fossil fuel interests; and 
  • The cadre of top anti-wind and anti-solar activists who have coordinated closely with these front groups and operatives for over a decade

This report helps to answer frequently asked questions about the role the fossil fuel industry has played in stoking opposition to renewable energy projects and comes at a time when many of these same opponents are escalating their attacks and seeking to derail the Inflation Reduction Act’s historic investment in renewables. 

INTRODUCTION

A national political network that’s funded by fossil fuel interests is fighting to block renewable energy projects   

The State Policy Network (SPN), a nonprofit that sits atop a 50-state network of think tanks and associated advocacy groups, recently announced that it will focus on working with state lawmakers in 2024 to prevent states from adopting renewable energy sources like wind and solar power. SPN organizations frequently receive funding from fossil fuel interests, right-wing donors, and donor-advised funds that help conceal the origins of a considerable amount of the money that flows into the network. 

The announcement came after SPN think tanks like the Caesar Rodney Institute and Texas Public Policy Foundation had already spent years fighting to block the deployment of renewable energy resources like offshore wind. Still, the move marks a surprisingly public shift in legislative priorities for a network that traditionally framed its opposition to renewable energy mandates and subsidies as being based on principles of limited government.  

The move may be sparking dissension within SPN’s ranks. The Show-Me Institute, a SPN think tank in Missouri, came out against a bill that would impose new siting limits on solar farms in the state, albeit while criticizing solar. 

“Nonetheless, interfering in the free market and banning the sale of land for solar energy projects seems like a step too far,” Avery Frank, a policy analyst for the Show Me Institute, said of the anti-solar siting bill in a blog post. “While there are ample concerns with solar energy, why is the state government limiting property rights and picking winners and losers in the energy market?”

EPI previously documented SPN’s campaigns against state renewable energy standards for electric utilities and net metering policies that support the growth of rooftop solar in in-depth reports that covered 2013-14 and 2015.

Following the money from the fossil fuel industry   

The latest analysis of annual tax reports filed by the network of nonprofits controlled by Charles Koch by the Center for Media & Democracy continues to show millions of dollars going to SPN groups and other organizations involved in anti-renewable energy campaigns. Koch is the billionaire CEO and chairman of Koch Industries, which profits from multiple sectors of the fossil fuel industry, but Koch Industries is just one part of the story. 

EPI’s research exposed longtime gas industry executives Karen Buchwald Wright and Tom Rastin, whose family owns the gas compressor manufacturer Ariel Corporation, as the backers of multiple entities involved in anti-renewables efforts in states like Ohio and Michigan. An unredacted list of SPN donors obtained by EPI shows Wright also contributed $700,000 to SPN in 2019 alone, making Wright one of SPN’s four largest listed donors that year. The couple did not respond to an email from EPI seeking comment on the funding.

EPI found $750,000 in contributions to the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) in annual IRS Form 990s filed by the foundation of Joseph Craft, the CEO and chairman of fossil fuel producer Alliance Resource Partners, for the years 2020-2022.

TPPF also received just over $2 million since 2011 from the Brigham Family Foundation, which is led by Ben “Bud” Brigham of the Brigham Exploration Company, an oil and gas company based in Texas. $837,000 of that money has been earmarked for TPPF’s Life:Powered Initiative, a pro-fossil fuels and anti-renewable energy campaign, in the Brigham Family Foundation’s annual tax filings since 2017. 

Joseph Craft and Bud Brigham did not respond to emails from EPI seeking comment on their foundations’ funding of TPPF.

In a sign that some fossil fuel companies are feeling more emboldened in their opposition to renewables in today’s polarized political environment, Consol Energy is now publicly sponsoring the “Not So Fast” campaign resisting the rapid transition from coal and gas to renewables. The new campaign features a website with the blunt name thecoalhardtruth.com and related social media channels.

Earlier research by EPI helped to reveal how Cloud Peak Energy, Murray Energy, and Peabody Energy secretly funded multiple groups that deny established climate science and spread disinformation about renewables, based on mandatory disclosures these major coal producers had to make in their bankruptcy case. EPI also uncovered over $1 million in Murray Energy payments to an Ohio law firm involved in opposing multiple renewable energy projects.

We showed how ExxonMobil, Kinder Morgan, and Occidental Petroleum quietly backed the Texas Industrial Energy Consumers opposition to American Electric Power’s plan to bring power from its North Central Wind Energy project to Texas before the Texas Public Utilities Commission. While that project moved forward without Texas’s support, TIEC had previously helped to kill AEP’s major Wind Catcher project on behalf of U.S. Steel, which has several subsidiaries involved in the coal industry. 

EPI was the first to begin to expose the secret money trail between the coal-burning utility FirstEnergy and Samuel Randazzo, a longtime attorney and lobbyist for the Industrial Energy Users-Ohio and anti-renewables activists in the Buckeye State. Randazzo was later indicted on multiple state and federal criminal charges in connection with millions of dollars he secretly received from FirstEnergy before his appointment as chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio and Ohio Power Siting Board in 2019. New evidence continues to emerge in ongoing court cases and related regulatory investigations following Randazzo’s recent suicide.

Front groups for the fossil fuel industry have been coordinating with anti-renewables activists for well over a decade 

Many of the arguments espoused today by anti-renewables activists can be traced back to the fossil fuel industry’s disinformation campaigns against climate science and global action to limit greenhouse gas emissions during the 1990s. 

One example is a 1997 paper, “Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not ‘Green,’” authored by Institute for Energy Research (IER) president Robert L. Bradley and published by the Cato Institute. Both IER and Cato have deep ties to the Koch network. Lisa Linowes, today a top anti-renewables activist, described Bradley’s work as a “seminal policy paper” a decade later in 2007 on her website windaction.org.

Tom Tanton, an energy consultant who worked with fossil fuel industry front groups like IER, the Heartland Institute, and American Tradition Institute began to cultivate relationships with anti-wind activists by the 2000s.

What emerged was a tight-knit network of anti-renewables diehards who can’t exactly be described as Not in My Backyard (NIMBY) activists because they oppose all wind farms, regardless of location. 

One Ohio-based anti-wind activist, Tom Stacy, eventually became a paid consultant for IER and the coal industry. Tanton still lists “friend” of Save Western Ohio (Stacy’s old anti-wind group) as his professional experience for 2009 on his LinkedIn profile. Stacy co-founded the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions and currently sits on the board of directors for the National Wind Watch, both clearinghouses for information utilized by anti-renewables activists nationally. 

Other anti-renewables activists claim to be unpaid for their efforts, but have not been shy about publicly partnering with groups that do receive fossil fuel money: 

These anti-renewables activists and the fossil fuel industry funded groups with whom they’ve teamed up represent some of the most prolific sources of information and strategies used by NIMBY activists in fights against wind and solar farms all over the country. 

Opponents allied with the fossil fuel industry seek to use a mix of disinformation, litigation, exclusionary siting and zoning laws and ordinances, and moratoria and bans to block deployment of renewables. Opposition to renewable energy is also being fueled by the spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories online. 

Local residents who choose to lease their land for wind and solar farms are often villainized by project opponents. In South Carolina, state law enforcement officials are investigating death threats received by members of the York County Council for supporting the construction of a solar panel factory. 

People who are skeptical of renewable development, but independent of the fossil fuel industry – who may have legitimate concerns about how a wind or solar farm may impact views, wildlife, agricultural lands, and other aspects of their communities – may be more open to public education, dialogue, and reasonable compromises that allow projects to move forward. Public input can even result in improvements to project plans, such as the addition of innovative agrivoltaics approaches that enable dual use of land for agriculture and solar power generation. 

Foes of renewables allied with the fossil fuel industry tend to support the expansion of coal, gas, and oil extraction and infrastructure, and oppose what they call government mandates aimed at limiting the environmental and public health impacts of fossil fuels. Local residents whose concerns about a particular renewable energy project are based on values like conservation, by contrast, often support wind and solar power in general and may be concerned about problems like climate change that are caused by fossil fuels. 

Renewables opponents who are paid by the fossil fuel industry sometimes pose as NIMBY activists. For example, a media outlet owned by Metric Media, which is known for its right-wing bias, reported that the emcee of an anti-solar town hall meeting in Ohio was a local farmer. A local journalist soon revealed that the emcee was actually a chief strategist for a political consulting firm that worked for a front group for the gas industry.

Public opinion research has long shown deep distrust of the oil and gas industry among the public. A new national labs survey shows that people living near solar farms trust project neighbors, nonprofit and community organizations, and universities more than other sources for information about energy projects. Exposing the money behind fossil fuel industry front groups and political operatives who pose as NIMBY activists, think tanks, and experts is a critical step to helping the public know disinformation when they see it. 

The forces aligned against renewables are powerful but not immune to public scrutiny and accountability, which is why fossil fuel interests generally seek to hide their support. For example, a spokesperson for The Empowerment Alliance once told a reporter that the pro-gas and anti-renewables group won’t disclose its funders because its donors don’t want to face public protests. 

NIMBY activists have also retreated from formal alliances with SPN think tanks like the Caesar Rodney Institute (CRI) when the funding those groups have received from the fossil fuel industry creates controversy. For instance, a Nantucket-based group recently publicly disassociated itself from the CRI-backed anti-offshore American Coalition for Ocean Protection after research and reporting followed the money trail from CRI and ACOP back to the fossil fuel industry.

A WHO’S WHO OF RENEWABLE ENERGY OPPONENTS

Fossil Fuel Industry Funders: 

Alliance Resource Partners: 

Alliance Resource Partners is an Oklahoma-based coal, oil, and gas company that’s been helmed by its CEO and President Joseph Craft since 1999.

EPI found annual tax reports that show Craft’s foundation contributed $750,000 from 2020 to 2022 to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a major political opponent of wind and solar power nationally. Craft spoke at TPPF’s Victory Summit in 2022. 

“… I’m sure that we had a little wind earlier tonight and that’s why the lights were flickering,” Craft said during the event. 

He also said that some solar farms weren’t being built because they couldn’t get enough land. 

The Joseph W. Craft III Foundation contributed a total of $550,000 in 2019 and 2020 to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where senior fellow Benjamin Zycher churned out articles attacking renewables and climate science. AEI currently lists Craft and his spouse, Ambassador Kelly Craft, as members of its National Council. 

“The council, composed of business and civic leaders from across the country, acts as a sounding board for AEI’s leadership on programmatic developments and new initiatives,” AEI said in its 2020 annual report, which also listed the Crafts as members of the National Council. “These leaders serve as ambassadors for the Institute, helping us extend the reach of our work to new groups of investors and leaders.” 

Craft’s foundation also contributed $900,000 to Government Accountability & Oversight, a group led by climate-denying attorney Chris Horner, from 2020-2022. 

In 2019, Alliance Resource Partners publicly opposed an Indiana solar farm proposed by Vectren Energy. 

American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers

The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) is a trade association that represents companies from throughout the oil supply chain. Its board includes representatives from oil and gas companies like Cheniere Energy, Chevron, Citgo, Energy Transfer, ExxonMobil, Flint Hill Resources (a subsidiary of Koch Industries), Marathon Petroleum, and Valero. 

AFPM has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to the American Energy Alliance (the advocacy arm of the Institute for Energy Research) in recent years, as well as smaller amounts to other anti-renewables groups like the Caesar Rodney Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Heartland Institute. 

AFPM has also sponsored State Policy Network annual meetings, including one where the finalists for a “Best Issue Campaign” award included the Caesar Rodney Institute’s anti-offshore wind campaign. John Eick, AFPM’s Manager of State and Local Outreach, attended and spoke on a panel attacking clean energy and climate policies at SPN’s 2019 annual meeting. 

BP, Shell, and Total quit AFPM a few years ago after their memberships were called out in corporate climate accountability research by organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Ariel Corporation 

Ariel Corporation manufactures compressors utilized globally by the methane gas industry. It’s a privately owned company that’s been led for three generations by the family of founder James P. Buchwald. Daughter Karen Buchwald Wright and her husband Tom Rastin represent the second generation of the family to lead Ariel Corp. Buchwald Wright retired as CEO in 2021, and is now chairman of the company. Her son Alex Wright took over as CEO. Rastin was the company’s executive vice president before he retired. 

Rastin and Buchwald Wright continue to helm the Ariel Foundation that’s funded by contributions from Ariel Corporation. While the Ariel Foundation generally makes publicly reported charitable contributions to local organizations in the Mount Vernon area, Rastin and Buchwald Wright’s influence spending has taken the form of harder-to-trace contributions that occur outside the foundation’s reporting.   

Research by EPI revealed Buchwald Wright and Rastin as key backers of the The Empowerment Alliance (TEA), a 501(c)(4) dark money group that promotes gas as green energy and frequently attacks wind and solar power.

TEA is currently campaigning against solar farms in Ohio. TEA’s Ohio director Mitch Given described the campaign as “fighting the nonsense of turning corn fields into solar fields” in a presentation to a meeting of the Business First Caucus that includes members of the Ohio House and Senate.

An anti-solar LLC called Knox Smart Development formed in 2023 to fight the Frasier Solar project near Ariel Corp.’s hometown of Mount Vernon. The “OUR MISSION” section of Knox Smart Development’s website initially included a link to “Empower America” that landed on an anti-renewables page on TEA’s website. The website also featured a report opposing Frasier Solar that had the file name “TEA_US_NoSolar.pdf.” 

Rastin later filed public comments opposing the Frasier Solar project with the Ohio Power Siting Board and attached a copy of Knox Smart Development’s motion to intervene in the case, but made no mention of his affiliations with TEA or his career with Ariel Corp.

In January of 2024, Rastin contributed $10,000 to support the Citizens for Local Choice ballot initiative aimed at repealing Michigan’s new law streamlining siting for renewable energy projects. Longtime anti-renewables activist and Michigander Kevon Martis is the public face of that initiative. Martis was one of two presenters at a February 2024 anti-solar town hall meeting hosted by Knox Smart Development. 

Rastin contributed $2,000 in February 2024 to anti-renewables Ohio House candidate Scott Pullins, an attorney who is representing convicted former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder in several campaign finance complaints. Pullins lost by a significant margin in his GOP primary. Pullins previously ran Third Rail Politics, a site that was secretly funded by Householder’s political operation.

The Karen Buchwald Wright Trust contributed $250,000 to Householder’s 501(c)(4) group Generation Now in 2017, when Buchwald Wright was still CEO of Ariel Corp. Generation Now later pleaded guilty in a racketeering case that detailed how the group was used to conceal $60 million in bribes paid by FirstEnergy to influence Householder. The scheme resulted in enactment of Ohio’s House Bill 6, which delivered lucrative ratepayer bailouts to FirstEnergy and other utilities and also rolled back Ohio’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards. 

Buchwald Wright served on the State Policy Network’s board from 2017 to 2020. The Energy and Policy Institute obtained a copy of SPN’s draft Form 990 for 2019 that included an unredacted Schedule B, which listed a $700,00 contribution from “Karen Wright Household” located at Ariel Corp.’s address. An earlier list of SPN’s donors from 2010 made public by Nick Surgey of Documented included a $100,000 contribution from Wright. 

Buchwald Wright has also served on the board of directors of American Petroleum Institute. Online bios indicate that she has contributed money to the American Enterprise Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Heritage Foundation, and Institute for Energy Research, a veritable who’s who of groups involved in fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns against climate science and cleantech.

The Daily Beast also recently reported that Ariel Corp. paid $135,000 to the Daily Caller News Foundation in 2021, based on another unredacted Form 990 that listed Tucker Carlson as the foundation’s chairman. The Daily Caller has reported on The Empowerment Alliance’s campaigns to promote gas. 

Wright and Rastin did not respond to an email from EPI requesting comment on their funding of TEA, SPN, and Generation Now. The email also asked the couple if they believe gas production and pipelines also should not be located on farmland, given TEA’s opposition to solar projects located in agricultural areas. 

Desert Royalty Company 

Desert Royalty Company is a Texas-based oil and gas investment company. 

CEO Kyle Stallings is currently listed as a chairman of the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s board of directors.  

“Oil is ubiquitous,” Stallings said at a 2020 meeting of the Society of Independent Professional Earth Scientists, where he attacked wind and solar power. 

Senior advisor Buddy Glieb is the founder of TLOW, or Texas Landowners Opposing Wind, a group opposing wind and solar farms in Brown and Coleman counties. 

DonorsTrust 

DonorsTrust is known as the dark money ATM of the right. Research by Greenpeace documented how climate denial groups, many of which also engage in attacks on renewables, saw an influx of funding from DonorsTrust and the affiliated Donors Capital Fund as publicly disclosed direct contributions from ExxonMobil and Koch foundations to those groups declined in the late 2000s and early 2010s. 

DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund received millions of dollars from Koch nonprofits like The Knowledge and Progress Fund during the 2000s and 2010s. Ultra Petroleum listed DonorsTrust as a creditor during its bankruptcy in 2016, but it’s not clear from court records how much money the petroleum company contributed to DonorsTrust. 

DonorsTrust remains a key source of funding for climate denial groups that are increasingly focused on fighting wind and solar farms, according to the latest analysis by the Center for Media & Democracy. In recent years, DonorsTrust has brought in money from other dark money portals that don’t disclose their donors, such as State Solutions Inc. (a 501(c)(4) affiliate of the Republican Governors Association), the Donald Trump-aligned America First Works, and conservative political operative Leonard Leo’s 85 Fund. 

ExxonMobil

Publicly, ExxonMobil has promoted its procurement of wind and solar power to help power its operations in states like Texas and New Mexico, as well as its production of lubricants used in wind turbines. 

In 2020, ExxonMobil quietly joined other members of the Texas Industrial Energy Consumers (TIEC), including Kinder Morgan and Occidental, in opposing American Electric Power’s plan to provide 300 megawatts of new wind energy from the North Central Wind Energy project to customers in Texas. 

ExxonMobil pledged to stop funding climate denial groups in 2008, though its funding of some groups involved in attacks on renewable energy continued in more recent years. For example, ExxonMobil continued to fund the Manhattan Institute until as recently as 2019, and paid $150,000 to the American Enterprise Institute in 2022. 

FirstEnergy 

In 2013, FirstEnergy Solutions (FES) played a major role in killing the Turning Point Solar project through its opposition to American Electric Power’s proposal to purchase power from the project, which was poised to become Ohio’s largest solar farm. FES was joined in that opposition by influential attorney and lobbyist Samuel Randazzo, who represented the Industrial Energy Users-Ohio in the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio case that decided Turning Point’s fate. 

Years later, a federal criminal investigation revealed that FirstEnergy secretly paid more than $22 million to Randazzo’s personal consulting firms between 2010 and 2019, a total capped off by a $4.3 million payment made shortly before Randazzo’s appointment as chairman of PUCO and the Ohio Power Siting Board in early 2019. 

Randazzo died by suicide while under indictment on state and federal charges before a full picture of everything FirstEnergy paid him to do emerged in ongoing criminal and civil cases, but at least one of those cases may proceed with Randazzo’s consulting firms as the defendants. Additional details continue to emerge in internal company records made public through related regulatory cases, civil litigation, and public records requests. 

The record is clear that between 2010 and 2020, Randazzo was a vocal opponent of wind power projects in Ohio. He spoke at meetings convened by local anti-wind power groups like the Seneca Anti-Wind Union and publicly represented the anti-wind group Greenwich Neighbors United as a lawyer and lobbyist. 

“Nice – and good for you, Sam. Love it,” FirstEnergy’s Senior Vice President of External Affairs Michael Dowling wrote in response to one 2016 email from Randazzo, in which Randazzo commented on his anti-wind efforts.

“As often as I can, I take on work for people who have been or are about to be run over by things like wind farm developers,” Randazzo said in the email. “I don’t do it for the money because if I did I would not do it all.” 

One five-year consulting agreement from 2013 that was made public by the PUCO after Randazzo resigned shows his consulting firm would be paid $300,000-$500,000 per year by FES for up to 80 hours a month of “Work” to be “Defined from time to time” by FES executives. The consulting agreement listed $500,000 as the amount to be paid in 2016 through monthly payments of $41,666. 

Dennis Schreiner, another anti-wind activist in Ohio, used to work at the Davis-Besse nuclear plants owned by FES (now Energy Harbor, which was recently acquired by Vistra Energy).

When it declared bankruptcy in 2018, FES attributed losses incurred by its coal-fired power plants to competition from cheaper and cleaner sources of electricity. 

International Union of Operating Engineers Local 825

International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 825 is a union located in New Jersey that’s been contracted to work on methane gas pipelines. The union and its affiliates have contributed money to multiple entities that targeted offshore wind power with misleading ads about dead whales in 2023, an election year in New Jersey. 

Engineers Labor Employer Cooperative 825, or ELEC 825, paid $100,000 to the Republican State Leadership Committee in 2023. 

The union’s PAC contributed $25,000 to Fixing New Jersey, which stated in its incorporation papers that it would work to improve voter participation during off-year elections by working to “educate, motivate and mobilize New Jersey residents on relevant ‘kitchen table’ issues.”

Fixing New Jersey’s paperwork said it would operate like a 501(c)(4), but it does not appear to be registered as a nonprofit with the IRS. The contribution from IUOE Local 825 is one of the few publicly reported contributions to Fixing New Jersey, the others being from Commerce NJ and Constructors for Good Government, the PAC for the pro-gas Utility and Transportation Contractors Association.   

The Local 825 Management Fund also pumped $55,000 into Affordable Energy for New Jersey, another 501(c)(4) that’s spent over $250,000 on Facebook ads that frequently support gas and attack offshore wind and other cleantech, according to the latest data from Facebook’s ad library. 

Koch Industries 

Charles Koch, the billionaire CEO and Chairman of Koch Industries, sits atop a private corporate empire that operates in multiple sectors of the fossil fuel industry and controls a powerful political network of nonprofits and donors. Organizations backed by the Koch network have closely coordinated with anti-renewables activists.

The Energy and Policy Institute documented the role that Koch network money and organizations played in campaigns against state renewable energy standards and net metering programs in detailed reports focused on 2013-2014 and 2015, and more recently in numerous blog posts.

The latest annual tax reports filed by the network of nonprofits controlled by Charles Koch continue to show millions of dollars going to State Policy Network groups and other organizations involved in anti-renewable energy campaigns. The Koch network has contributed heavily to donor-advised funds like DonorsTrust and the National Philanthropic Trust that have helped to shield the source of millions of dollars in contributions to nonprofits. 

Murray Energy 

Murray Energy had to publicly disclose during its bankruptcy that it paid over $1 million to the law firm Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff LLP, which represented opponents of multiple wind and solar projects and proposals in Ohio. 

Prior to Murray Energy’s bankruptcy, Cleveland.com reported that the coal producer had secretly paid for legal fees and expert witnesses for anti-wind activists who opposed the Icebreaker anti-wind power project on Lake Erie before the Ohio Power Siting Board. Murray Energy’s role was only revealed because of questions raised by attorneys for environmental groups like the Ohio Environmental Council in data requests and depositions. CEO Robert Murray joined the attack publicly with a letter to Cleveland.com after the company’s role in funding the opposition was exposed. 

Benesch attorney John Stock, who was paid by Murray Energy to represent the anti-wind activists in the case, had previously sought to intervene in multiple wind power siting cases in Ohio on behalf of a murky group called Campaign for American Affordable and Reliable Energy that admitted it represented coal interests but did not disclose which coal companies it represented.

Stock also represented Murray Energy in opposing Dayton Power & Light’s closure of a coal plant before the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. 

Murray Energy’s support for groups involved in anti-wind and -solar efforts extended beyond Ohio. Bankruptcy case filings revealed Murray’s funding of multiple national climate denial groups that spread disinformation about renewables, including the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Heartland Institute.  

National Philanthropic Trust

The National Philanthropic Trust (NPT) is a self-described “leader in donor-advised funds (DAFs) and one of the largest grantmaking institutions in the United States.”

While many of the grants made by the National Philanthropic Trust each year go to credible  charitable organizations, donor-advised funds controlled by the NPT also helped to shield the sources of contributions to groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heartland Institute, and State Policy Network in 2021 and 2022, according to a tax report reviewed by EPI.

NPT is part of a complex network of nonprofits that serve as multi-way pass-throughs that help to obscure the passage of money from major donors like Charles Koch’s Stand Together network to the intended end point recipients. In 2022, NPT received millions of dollars from Charles Koch nonprofits, including $23.5 million from the Knowledge and Progress Fund, $6.5 million from the Charles Koch Charitable Fund, and approximately $1.7 million from Stand Together Trust. NPT also paid out over $25 million to Koch’s Stand Together Foundation in 2022. 

Paul Singer 

Paul Singer is the billionaire founder of Elliott Management, a hedge fund that’s a top institutional shareholder in coal producer Peabody Energy and that is also currently invested in oil and gas companies like Marathon Petroleum and Phillips 66. 

He’s also the chairman of the Manhattan Institute, a think tank based in New York that’s frequently attacked climate science and renewable energy projects. Singer’s foundation reports making annual contributions to the Manhattan Institute, most recently $1.6 million paid during a fiscal year that covered most of 2022. 

The Paul E. Singer Foundation paid $300,000 to longtime GOP operative Susan Ralston’s consulting firm between 2018 and 2020, as NPR and Floodlight first reported. Ralston heads up Citizens for Responsible Solar, which has coordinated with anti-solar groups in multiple states. 

Singer’s foundation also contributed $68 million in 2022 to the JP Morgan Charitable Giving Fund, a donor-advised fund managed by the National Philanthropic Trust.  

Strake Energy 

George W. Strake, Jr., is the longtime president of the petroleum company Strake Energy. He’s also president of the Strake Foundation. 

The foundation contributed $50,000 in 2022 to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, where Strake is a director emeritus, according to an annual tax report. 

The Strake Foundation also contributed smaller amounts of money that year to other key groups involved in disinformation campaigns against renewables, including the American Legislative Exchange Council and American Enterprise Institute. 

Front Groups

Americans for Affordable Energy

Americans for Affordable Energy Inc. (AAE) is a 501(c)(4) that formed in 2018. Its stated mission is “advocating for policy solutions that lead to affordable and reliable energy for consumers and businesses.” 

AAE raised and spent nearly $500,000 in 2018, its only active year, when the group operated using names like Renewable Arkansas and Renewable Louisiana and pretended to be pro-solar, but solely focused on attacking the Wind Catcher project. 

The only officer listed on AAE’s incorporation papers and annual reports to the IRS is Andrew Portare, then the fiance of Frank Klepadlo, a director of research at the Hawthorn Group, a political consulting firm known for getting caught up in multiple scandals while representing clients in the fossil fuel industry. 

American Legislative Exchange Council

In 2023, the corporate bill mill ALEC considered a new draft model bill, “Preserving The Environment, Open Spaces, Forests, Livability, and Wildlife Habitat Statute To Regulate Large Scale Solar Plants,” but did not adopt it as an official ALEC model policy. The draft bill appeared on ALEC’s website but has since been deleted. 

The draft model bill included a preamble that attacked solar as unreliable and pointed to changes in temperature near solar farms, while ignoring the many benefits of solar, including solar’s dramatically lower lifecycle emissions when compared to fossil fuels. Climate denial groups like the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) that work closely with ALEC have tried to create a false equivalency between the relatively minor and localized temperature effects of solar farms and global climate change caused by emissions from burning fossil fuels. Research has shown that the temperature effects are largely limited to the area within a solar facility’s footprint and are either unmeasurable or minimal in adjacent areas. 

The draft ALEC bill sought to impose restrictive siting limits on solar that included setbacks of at least 1,500 feet from residential lots, far beyond the typical setbacks of 50-200 feet currently found in the U.S. 

Emails obtained by EPI show ALEC shared copies of the draft bill with state legislators who are members of ALEC’s Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force and planned to discuss the legislation at the group’s annual meeting. The task force meeting agenda also featured a presentation on “An Energy Plan for Reliable, Affordable Electric Power” by David Stevenson of the Caesar Rodney Institute. ALEC later adopted a similarly named model anti-renewable energy policy aimed at propping up coal plants, and bills based on that model have since popped up in a number of states.    

A list of task force meeting attendees included lobbyists from Koch Industries, Alliance Resource Partners, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, and American Gas Association, as well as climate deniers like Steve Milloy of the Energy and Environment Legal Institute and Craig Rucker of CFACT. 

Advocating for model policies that obstruct utility-scale solar projects could further divisions between other longtime members of the ALEC task force from the utility industry, such as Arizona Public Service and the Edison Edison Electric Institute, and the fossil fuel industry.

Earlier ALEC’s model bill attacked state clean energy policies like renewable energy standards and net metering. ALEC has received from fossil fuel industry sources like AFPM, Peabody Energy, and Charles Koch’s nonprofits. 

ALEC also has a history of coordinating with anti-wind interests. In 2012, Todd Wynn, then ALEC’s lead staffer on the EEA Task Force, was listed as a participant in a D.C. coordinating meeting between anti-wind activists and special interest groups known for their climate denial and fossil fuel funding. Later that year, members of the anti-wind Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions traveled to D.C. and met with Wynn and staff for Congressional leadership as part of a campaign against the wind production tax credit, according to an AWED report-back document showing how that coordination continued.  

Americans for Prosperity 

Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a group founded and controlled by Charles Koch, has long fought the transition to clean energy by campaigning against state and federal standards and subsidies that support wind and solar power. Publicly, AFP has grounded those fights in a professed belief in limited government and free market values, which it also uses to justify its efforts to free the fossil fuel industry from government oversight and regulations aimed at protecting the environment and public health. 

Despite its professed adherence to free-market ideology, AFP has at times partnered with anti-wind activists who want to use the power of government to limit or outright ban wind farms as part of AFP’s campaigns to eliminate federal production tax credits that helped enable the last decade’s growth in wind energy. Koch Industries, meanwhile, hasn’t been shy about benefiting from government subsidies. 

AFP campaigned against American Electric Power’s Wind Catcher project, which would have resulted in construction of the nation’s largest wind farm, in multiple states before the project was finally nixed by the Texas Public Utilities Commission. AFP took a victory lap after AEP pulled the plug on the project.

Caesar Rodney Institute 

Based in Delaware, the Caesar Rodney Institute is currently spearheading a national campaign against offshore wind power. 

CRI has received funding in recent years from the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and AFPM-funded American Energy Alliance.

CRI formed the American Coalition for Ocean Protection to raise money to support anti-offshore wind litigation. ACOP is a member of the Save the Whales Coalition, which also includes the Heartland Institute and Committee for a Constructructive Tomorrow, that’s used billboards, aerial advertising, and protests to spread disinformation linking offshore wind development to beached whales. 

EPI identified the billionaire du Pont family’s Longwood Foundation as the source of nearly half of CRI’s revenue in 2022, based on tax reports. Thère du Pont is the Longwood Foundation’s president and also serves on the board of the DuPont Company, which sells a variety of products used by coal, methane gas, and nuclear power plants and in oil and gas extraction. The Longwood Foundation’s chairman, Charlie Copeland, a member of the du Pont family, is also Director of CRI’s Center for Analysis of Delaware’s Economy & Government Spending. 

Another family member, Ben du Pont, chaired a 2023 fundraiser for CRI’s anti-offshore wind campaign.

Heading up CRI’s anti-offshore campaign is David Stevenson, a former employee of the DuPont Company, who also works as a paid consultant for utilities and large energy users. Stevenson said he keeps the names of clients of his consulting firm Alternative Strategies Consulting confidential while under examination in a lawsuit where he and several others challenged Delaware’s implementation of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Stevenson and the other plaintiffs presented themselves as customers of Delmarva Electric Cooperative and Delmarva Power in the lawsuit.

The Energy and Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal), formerly known as the American Tradition Institute (ATI) and Western Tradition Institute, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization currently led by three veterans of fossil fuel industry campaigns against climate science: Steve Milloy, Craig Richardson, and Greg Walcher. 

In 2023, multiple opinion pieces by Milloy claiming that offshore wind projects kill whales were published in the Daily Caller and New York Sun, and he was interviewed by the New York Post on the same topic. 

E&E Legal raised just over $2 million in 2022 and paid $500,000 to Milloy and $125,000 to Richardson for contractual services. $943,000 of that money E&E Legal raised that year came from DonorsTrust.

Milloy previously worked as director of government affairs for Murray Energy, and E&E Legal has financial ties to the coal industry. Coal producers Peabody Energy and Arch Coal disclosed funding for E&E Legal during their bankruptcies in 2016.  

David Schnare of E&E Legal joined an attorney from the Civitas Institute (a State Policy Network group that merged with the John Locke Foundation in 2021), in representing opponents of the Amazon Wind Farm in North Carolina in a lawsuit from 2015-2016. 

ATI named coal producer Alpha Natural Resources as a member in 2012 in a declaration by ATI’s then-executive director Tom Tanton that was filed in a Colorado lawsuit where the group targeted the state’s renewable energy standard. Tanton is currently listed as E&E Legal’s Director of Science and Technology Assessment.

Tanton said in his 2012 declaration that ATI’s membership included unnamed “electric power generating and transmission companies that generate energy from coal, natural gas and oil-fired and combustion turbine generation facilities.” 

Also in 2012, a judge in Montana ordered the release of bank records from the American Tradition Partnership (previously known as the Western Tradition Partnership), the now defunct 501(c)(4) arm of ATI. ProPublica made public copies of some $1.1 million in checks to the 501(c)(4). EPI searched through the checks while preparing this report. Among them was a $25,000 payment from the Intermountain Rural Electric Association and smaller contributions from the Montana & Wyoming Oil Company and Peak Energy Resources.  

A group called Americans for Job Security contributed just over $70,000 to the American Tradition Partnership (ATP) sometime between November 2011 and October 2012, during which time ATP participated in ATI’s lawsuit against Colorado’s voter-approved renewable energy standard. Years later, in 2019, Americans for Job Security was forced to reveal its funding for 2010-2012 due to a campaign finance complaint and lawsuit brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The funding included millions of dollars from oil and gas producers Continental Resources and Devon Energy paid in 2012. 

Anti-renewables activists John Droz and Kevon Martis have both served as fellows for ATI/E&E Legal. In February of 2012, Droz and Martis participated in a coordinating meeting between anti-wind activists from multiple states and representatives of ATI and other national groups backed by fossil fuel money. Droz also helped draft a proposal for a national public relations campaign against wind power in advance of the meeting. The proposal called for anti-wind activists to join forces with established national groups like ATI and the Heartland Institute. 

Other anti-wind activists in attendance included Audra Parker of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound that fought the Cape Wind project, which sought to build the nation’s first offshore wind farm before it was abandoned after years of litigation and opposition. The Alliance’s founders and leadership included Bill Koch of Oxbow Carbon.

Another participant in the 2012 meeting was longtime ATI/E&E Legal fellow George Taylor, who is the founder of Palmetto Energy Research, where “his focus has been on the costs and environmental impacts of all leading choices for the generation of electricity.” The IRS automatically revoked Palmetto Energy Research’s status in 2019 due to failure to file annual Form 990s. 

Taylor listed relationships with ATI, the Heartland Institute, Institute for Energy Research, and National Rural Electric Cooperative Association in a document that accompanied the 2012 meeting. Taylor currently serves as treasurer and secretary on the board of directors for the anti-wind National Wind Watch. 

Heartland Institute 

The Heartland Institute is a think tank with a long history of virulent disinformation campaigns denying the dangers of everything from second-hand tobacco smoke to pollution from burning fossil fuels. 

Linnea Luekin of the Heartland Institute recently called for 2-mile setbacks for wind turbines in an appearance last month before state lawmakers in West Virginia. Heartland is also currently part of the Save the Whales Coalition that was behind anti-offshore-wind aerial and billboard ads in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 2023.

Multiple Heartland policy advisors testified against a proposed solar farm in Spotsylvania, Virginia, that became the target of negative attacks by an echo chamber of groups backed by the fossil fuel industry and right-wing media sources.

During a 2010 podcast interview with James Taylor of the Heartland Institute, Ohio anti-wind activist Tom Stacy described Taylor and others from Heartland as part of a network of experts who help to recruit anti-wind activists to testify before state lawmakers and review their testimony before it is delivered. Heartland has for years promoted the views of anti-renewables activists like Stacy, John Droz, Kevon Martis, and Lisa Linowes.

In 2022, the Heartland Institute received $1.26 million from DonorsTrust, continuing a trend of a significant portion of Heartland’s funding coming from a single dark money source. 

EPI spotted that Heartland received $45,000 between 2019 and 2022 from the foundation named after deceased oil man Ken W. Davis, which is now led by his son T. Cullen Davis. Davis did not respond to an email from EPI requesting comment on the foundation’s funding of the Heartland Institute.  

Murray Energy had to disclose $130,000 in 2018 payments to Heartland in a bankruptcy case filing. Internal Heartland documents made public by DeSmog had previously revealed Murray Energy also paid $100,000 to the group in 2010. Heartland also received $75,000 from the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers in 2017. 

Institute for Energy Research 

The Institute for Energy Research has spent over a decade developing a network of anti-renewables activists that it has promoted via its blog MasterResource and worked with to oppose clean energy policies and spread disinformation about cleantech.

Currently listed as principals or contributors on the blog are influential anti-renewables activists John Droz of the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions, Sherri Lange of the North American Platform Against Wind, Lisa Linowes of the Industrial Wind Action Group, and Kevon Martis of Our Home Our Voice and Citizens for Local Choice.

MasterResource.org has served as an echo chamber for disinformation about renewables that’s already been thoroughly debunked by fact checkers. In 2019, IER’s blog featured a post by Lange that attempted to defend President Donald Trump’s widely lampooned false claim that noise from wind turbines can cause cancer. 

Robert Bradley, the founder and CEO of IER, responded to an EPI blog post that highlighted the State Policy Network’s decision to make preventing states from adopting wind and solar power a top state legislative priority for 2024. Bradley included excerpts from EPI’s post that mentioned Martis, Charles and Bill Koch, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, and multiple SPN think tanks, among others, and then wrote:

These aforementioned groups and individuals (and many more) are standing tall against the Climate Industrial Complex and Big Government Wind, Big Governmental Solar, Big Government Batteries, and the I-want-to-control-your-energy-life elitists. The real environmentalists speak from the grassroots, not from Washington, D.C. 

In 2019, EPI identified the American Energy Alliance as the starting point of an attack on a Budweiser Super Bowl ad that focused on the beer company’s procurement of wind power, an attack that was then echoed by the Kentucky Coal Association and anti-wind activists like Martis. 

In 2018, EPI documented Ohio anti-wind activist Tom Stacy’s transformation from an unpaid anti-wind activist into a paid consultant who co-authored anti-renewables reports for IER and the coal industry group America’s Power.

In 2017, EPI found the name of a former IER employee listed as the “author” in the document properties of a sign-on letter opposing the wind production tax credit that Linowes claimed she wrote alone. 

Bradley celebrated the eighth anniversary of MasterResource in a 2016 blog. 

“A whole new cast has come on board at MasterResource since then, particularly with the grassroots talent fighting against industrial wind turbines,” Bradley wrote. “The more than 200 contributors to MasterResource indicates the great growth of the free-market movement in the (Obama) Era of Energy Peril.” 

The American Energy Alliance, the advocacy arm of IER, received $200,000 from AFPM in 2022. AFPM’s board of directors was chaired that year by Jeff Ramsey, the CEO of the Koch Industries subsidiary Flint Hill Resources.

Bradley co-founded an IER predecessor group in Texas with Charles Koch during the 1990s. IER received funding from the Koch network until around 2020, but Koch nonprofits haven’t disclosed direct contributions to IER in their annual tax reports in more recent years.

The coal industry has supplied additional funding. Peabody Energy had to disclose $50,000 in funding for IER during its bankruptcy, and Alpha Natural Resources and Cloud Peak Energy listed IER as a creditor in their bankruptcies. 

Protect Our Pocketbooks 

Protect Our Pocketbooks is a 501(c)(4) organization whose stated mission is “educating consumers and policymakers about the importance of sensible energy policies that protect the consumer and work for local communities.” 

It raised and spent more than $1.7 million attacking the Wind Catcher project in 2018, and has undertaken no public- facing activities in the years since. The group’s only officer is Justin Allen, an attorney and lobbyist for Wright Lindsay Jennings, whose clients have included some smaller oil and gas producers and the coal producer Murray Energy. 

Protect Our Pocketbooks also employed two other lobbying firms with clients in the fossil fuel industry in Louisiana. 

State Policy Network 

The national State Policy Network organization sits atop a 50-state network of affiliated think tanks and associated advocacy groups behind multiple disinformation campaigns attacking state and federal clean energy and climate policies.

SPN groups often present themselves as free market advocates opposed to state and federal clean energy laws and subsidies based on libertarian values and principles of limited government. Conversely, SPN members like the Caesar Rodney Institute, Civitas Institute, and Texas Public Policy Foundation have fought to use the powers of government to block deployment of renewable energy.

Another SPN group, the Center for the American Experiment, published a report trumpeting local government bans and moratoriums by anti-renewable-energy gadfly Robert Bryce in 2021. The Center received $20,000 from Americans for Prosperity that year. 

In 2024, SPN for the first time publicly identified preventing states from adopting intermittent sources of electricity like wind and solar power as a top state legislative priority. The move sparked divisions within SPN’s membership, as evidenced by the Show Me Institute opposing new Missouri legislation that would impose total land use limits on solar farms. 

SPN’s single largest source of revenue for many years has been dark money groups like DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, so it can be difficult to trace much of the money going into SPN back to the original source. What is known about the money trail behind SPN and its members has made the network synonymous with Koch funding and influence.   

Unredacted lists of major donors found in copies of SPN’s 2010 and 2019 IRS tax reports included contributions of $100,000 and $700,000 from Karen Buchwald Wright, then the CEO of Ariel Corporation. 

Peabody Energy had to disclose about $50,000 in funding for SPN in its bankruptcy. 

Republican Governors Association 

The Republican Governors Association targeted Maine’s Democratic Governor Janet Mills with anti-offshore wind messages in 2021 and 2022, both directly and through its 501(c)(4) affiliate State Solutions Inc.

RGA used concerns about offshore wind raised by Maine’s iconic lobster industry to attack Mills and support former Republican Gov. Paul LePage’s comeback bid, but voters stuck with Mills. 

Republican State Leadership Committee 

The RSLC is a 527 group that describes itself as the largest organization of Republican state leaders in the country. 

In 2023, the RSLC targeted New Jersey’s off-year state legislative elections with anti-offshore wind ads that echoed bogus claims about beached whales. EPI reviewed an RSLC report to the IRS that covered the first half of the year and found hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from fossil fuel interests, including Koch Industries, Marathon Petroleum, Devon Energy, Ovontiv, EQT, CNX Resources, the American Petroleum Institute, Energy Transfer, and Consol Energy. 

More recently, the RSLC belatedly filed an amended report to the IRS covering the latter half of 2023, which included the time period when the group undertook the bulk of its anti-offshore wind campaign targeting of Democratic state lawmakers. The amended report included contributions from the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, Chevron, Energy Transfer, ExxonMobil, Marathon, API, Koch Industries, the National Mining Association, and coal industry associations in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. 

Texas Public Policy Foundation

In 2022, the New York Times published an in-depth story on the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s national crusade against clean energy and climate action. The think tank has used disinformation about offshore wind turbines killing whales to fundraise and filed a lawsuit to block an offshore wind project based on similar false claims. 

In 2022, EPI traced misleading claims that renewables were to blame for the Texas blackouts during 2021’s Winter Storm Uri back to TPPF. In reality, the blackouts were predominantly caused by widespread failures of the methane gas system in Texas and long-term failures to winterize the state’s power grid despite previous blackouts during periods of extreme cold. 

Lisa Linowes, a New Hampshire-based anti-renewables activist, has served as a senior policy fellow for TPPF. Linowes authored a two-part anti-wind-power report for TPPF in 2018.

TPPF has received millions of dollars from Koch network-affiliated nonprofits in recent years, and most of the group’s board members make money from the fossil fuel industry.

EPI found $750,000 in contributions to the Texas Public Policy Foundation in annual IRS Form 990s filed by the foundation of Joseph Craft, the CEO and chairman of fossil fuel producer Alliance Resource Partners, for the years 2020-2022.

TPPF has also received just over $2 million since 2011 from the Brigham Family Foundation, which is led by Ben “Bud” Brigham of Brigham Exploration Company, an oil and gas company based in Texas. $837,000 of that money has been earmarked for TPPF’s Life:Powered Initiative, a pro-fossil fuels and anti-renewables campaign, in the Brigham Family Foundation’s annual tax filings since 2017.  

Anti-Renewable-Energy Activists and Operatives

John Droz 

Realtor John Droz resides in North Carolina and maintains a summer cottage in upstate New York. Based on undergraduate and graduate degrees in physics and some work earlier in his career for General Electric, Droz has presented himself as a scientific expert on a wide range of issues.

He’s emerged as an influential source of conspiracy theories and disinformation about everything from climate science and wind and solar power to Covid-19 and the 2020 elections.208 

Droz is a member of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Oil and Gas Commission. In 2018, he self-published a paper that was supportive of offshore drilling for oil and methane gas off North Carolina’s coast.

 “Offshore wind energy is a much worse choice than is offshore natural gas,” Droz wrote in the paper. 

He’s also a member of the CO2 Coalition, formerly known as the George Marshall Institute, a climate denial group that has received money from the Koch network and oil and gas producer EOG Resources.  

Droz co-founded the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) with Ohio anti-wind activist Tom Stacy more than a decade ago. AWED and Droz have provided model local laws, strategies, and information utilized by anti-renewables activists all over the country. 

A “Potpourri” section of AWED’s website wiseenergy.org lists individuals “who contributed constructive ideas for this website,” including:

Since 2009, AWED has published a monthly newsletter that’s frequently cross-posted on the Institute for Energy Research’s blog MasterResource.org, where Droz is listed as a principal contributor.

In 2011, Droz announced in the newsletter that he’d joined the American Tradition Institute as a fellow. He would later describe the position as unpaid.

“ATI has some great aspirations, and getting rid of unscientific options like wind energy is high on their list,” Droz wrote.

He pointed to ATI’s 2011 lawsuit against Colorado’s renewable energy standard as an example, and asked readers to donate money to support ATI. 

ATI named coal producer Alpha Natural Resources as a member in a declaration by executive director Tom Tanton filed in the Colorado lawsuit in March of 2012. Tanton said ATI’s membership also included unnamed “electric power generating and transmission companies that generate energy from coal, natural gas and oil-fired and combustion turbine generation facilities.” 

One month earlier, in February of 2012, Droz participated in a coordinating meeting between anti-wind activists and representatives of ATI and other national groups backed by the fossil fuel money. He also helped draft an anti-wind public relations strategy in advance of the meeting. 

Droz was back in D.C. that December with Taylor and investor Larry Gerdes meeting with representatives of the American Legislative Exchange Council and Competitive Enterprise Institute and staff for multiple members of the U.S. House and Senate, according to an AWED report-back document EPI later found on one of Droz’s anti-wind websites. 

“We gave each legislator a copy of the Rasmussen Renewable Energy report(2.0),” that document said.

Kimball Rasmussen is president and CEO of the Utah-based Deseret Power, a coal burning and mining electric cooperative. In 2010, Rasmussen credited Droz and Taylor with providing “thoughtful input” on the 2.0 edition of his report, “A Rational Look at Renewable Energy,” which disparaged renewables while promoting methane gas as an alternative for reducing CO2 emissions. 

AWED’s D.C. trip report-back document from 2012 also illustrates how Droz quickly got to work implementing parts of the national anti-wind PR strategy, which included plans to distribute copies of the Rasmussen report and coordinate with well-funded national groups like ALEC and the Heritage Foundation. Droz later continued to coordinate his anti-wind efforts with Koch-backed groups like Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks. 

“Everyone involved with AWED (including me) is an unpaid volunteer, who is committed to Science-based energy policies,” Droz told EPI 2017.

Lisa Linowes 

Lisa Linowes founded the Industrial Wind Action Group in 2006 and has since emerged as one of the nation’s top anti-renewables activists. Her website, WindAction.org, describes her group as the “#1 Trusted Information Resource on Large-scale Renewables.” 

WindAction is incorporated as a “Domestic Profit Corporation” in New Hampshire, where Linowes resides, though the group’s incorporation information states it was “organized exclusively for charitable, educational & scientific purposes.” 

WindAction’s website claims the group is “not funded in any way” by the fossil fuel industry or “affiliated with large political activists groups.” 

Linowes is the co-founder of the Save Right Whales Coalition that’s fighting offshore wind development along the east coast. In 2021, she joined the Caesar Rodney Institute’s American Coalition for Ocean Protection. 

In addition, Linowes serves on the board of directors of Environmental Progress, a California-based group known for criticizing wind and solar power and advocating for nuclear energy and fossil fuels. Michael Shellenberger, the group’s president, is involved in the Save Right Whales Coalition with Linowes. 

Linowes is also the co-chairman of the Wildlife, Energy & Community Coalition, which opposes “harmful industrial-scale renewables.” 

Linowes has long coordinated her efforts with think tanks funded by the fossil fuel industry. The Institute for Energy Research has promoted Linowes’ writings and efforts on its blog MasterResource.org since 2010, and in 2018 she joined IER’s newly formed advisory council. 

In 2017, the name of IER’s former director of communications was listed as the “author” in the document properties of an open letter opposing the federal production tax credit for wind power that Linowes claimed she wrote alone.

She’s also served as a senior policy fellow for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, where she authored a two-part anti-wind report in 2018.

Kevon Martis 

Kevon Martis is a longtime anti-renewables activist in Michigan who has organized and led multiple groups opposing renewable energy projects. Martis has served as a leader of Our Home, Our Voice (OHOV) since its inception in 2023, when the self-described 501(c)(4) organization opposed the passage of legislation aimed at streamlining renewable energy siting in Michigan. OHOV reported over $145,000 in revenue on its annual tax report for 2023, but was not required to disclose its donors. 

Martis is now the spokesperson for a Citizens for Local Choice ballot initiative that’s fighting to repeal Michigan’s new siting law. Matt Brewer, an attorney for a group that’s opposing the ballot initiative, told Planet Detroit earlier this year that OHOV’s contributions to Citizens for Local Choice may have violated campaign finance laws by hiding the source of some early donations to the ballot committee. Brewer then filed a campaign finance complaint against OHOV. 

Citizens for Local Choice did publicly report a $10,000 contribution from longtime Ariel Corporation executive Tom Rastin of Ohio. 

Martis joined the Energy and Environment Legal Institute as a Senior Policy Fellow in 2016, about a month after the Wall Street Journal reported that Arch Coal had to disclose its funding of the anti-renewables and anti-climate science group in its bankruptcy filings. In 2012, Martis participated in a coordinating meeting in D.C. between anti-wind activists from multiple states and representatives of the American Tradition Institute and other front groups backed by the fossil fuel industry. 

Martis has also led the Interstate Informed Citizens Coalition (IICC) since 2011. 

“Martis’s co-founder at the IICC, Joshua Nolan, represented Martin County Coal Corporation in a lawsuit that same year,” as Distilled first reported. 

The Institute for Energy Research has promoted Martis’s writings and efforts on its blog MasterResource since 2012.

“I have not and do not receive any support from any energy interest of any kind,” Martis said in a 2020 MasterResource blog post by IER’s Robert Bradley. “This includes fossil fuel utilities or the Koch family, etc.”

Martis also described his fellowship position at E&E Legal as unfunded and said “I take no direction from them on any matter.” 

Martis’s anti-renewables efforts have extended far beyond his own backyard in Michigan.

“And I have testified on wind energy land use issues across the Midwest, including OH, IL, MI and Kentucky as well as in Nebraska and North Dakota,” Martis said during his 2016 testimony to the Ohio Power Siting Board on wind siting rules.

“I have also been invited to testify before members of Congress in Washington DC,” Martis also said, in reference to a 2013 event hosted by IER.  

Martis also appeared at anti-wind meetings in Ohio with Samuel Randazzo, the former attorney and lobbyist who was secretly paid millions of dollars by the coal-burning utility FirstEnergy between 2010 and 2019. 

Tom Stacy 

Tom Stacy has served as a director for the National Wind Watch (NWW), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Massachusetts that serves as a clearinghouse for anti-wind information, since 2009.

NWW is frequently asked if it is “backed by the coal or nuclear industry.”

“NWW is not backed by, affiliated with, or funded in any way by these or any other industry, political organization, or ‘think tank,’” according to a FAQ page found on the group’s website wind-watch.org. 

The FAQ page also states that members of the organization’s board of directors “are unpaid volunteers with no affiliations to fossil fuel or nuclear energy industries or any similar outside interests.”

Stacy began to fight wind power as the leader of Save Western Ohio from 2008 to 2010, and he also co-founded the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions with John Droz.

For many years, Stacy could be found speaking at events and hearings alongside other prominent wind power opponents like Lisa Linowes, Kevon Martis, and Samuel Randazzo. 

By 2014, Stacy became a paid consultant for groups like the Institute for Energy Research and the coal industry group America’s Power. He’s co-authored multiple reports that mislead on the costs of renewable energy with George Taylor, a consultant and fellow for the Energy and Environment Legal Institute.

In 2022, Stacy co-authored a report by the Center of the American Experiment, a State Policy Network group in Minnesota, that opposed Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers’s 100% clean energy plan. The Center received $250,000 that year from the Koch group Americans for Prosperity. 

Tom Tanton

Tom Tanton has been the president of the consulting firm T2 & Associates since 2003, and during that time he has churned out reports for groups like the American Petroleum Institute and American Legislative Exchange Council. 

Tanton was a vice president at the Institute for Energy Research from 2003 to 2007, where he was part of the fight to kill the Cape Wind offshore wind project. He’s been affiliated with the American Tradition Institute and Energy and Environment Legal Institute for over a decade.  

Tanton’s LinkedIn account lists “friend” of Save Western Ohio as his professional experience for 2009. Save Western Ohio was the anti-wind group led by Tom Stacy before Stacy became a paid consultant who co-authored reports for IER and the coal industry.

A slew of influential anti-renewables activists who emerged during the 2000s have cited Tanton as an early influence on their views on wind power. 

A page from the website We Oppose Wind Farms last updated in 2009 includes a picture of Tanton posing with “statewide wind warriors” from New York. More recently, the anti-wind group Save Ontario Shores used public intervenor funds to pay Tanton to be an expert witness against the Lighthouse Wind project in upstate New York, which was never built.  

“Much of my tutorial about wind energy and grid operations came from Tom Tanton’s knowledgeable bonhomie,” birder and anti-wind activist Jon Boone wrote in a 2006 paper. “His patient mentoring, enkindled through long phone conversations and voluminous exchanges of emails, made this work possible.” 

Boone created the website stopillwind.com and produced and directed “Life Under a Windplant,” a documentary often cited by anti-wind activists. Some of Boone’s writings from more than a decade ago can still be found on IER’s blog MasterResource.org. 

Tanton topped a 2008 list where anti-winder John Droz dubbed “the better writers regarding the industrial wind power business.” 

That same year, Boone credited Tanton, Droz, Lisa Linowes, and others with reviewing a draft of his article “Why Wind Won’t Work.” 

In 2010, anti-winder Ken Hawkins credited Tanton, Boone, Droz, and Stacy, as well as IER’s CEO Robert Bradley, with reviewing a draft of his paper on renewable energy grid integration.

Posted by Dave Anderson

Dave Anderson is the policy and communications manager for the Energy and Policy Institute. Dave has been working at the nexus of clean energy and public policy since 2008. Prior to joining the Energy and Policy Institute, he was an outreach coordinator for the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. He is also an alumnus of the Sierra Club and the Alliance for Climate Protection (now the Climate Reality Project). Dave’s research has helped to spur public scrutiny of political attacks on clean energy and climate science by powerful special interests, such as ExxonMobil and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). His work has been cited by major media outlets, such as CBS News and the Wall Street Journal, and he has served as a speaker on panels at national solar industry conferences. Dave holds a MA in Political Science from the University of New Hampshire, where he also received a BA in Humanities.

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