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LEGIT, LIST OF FRONT GROUPS

WOW

‘Man who killed offshore wind’ now pushing fossil fuels and nuclear for Koch-funded Mackinac Center in Michigan - Energy and Policy Institute

Strata Policy

SIMMONS UTAH

Strata Policy

Strata Policy was a 501(c)(3) non-profit research organization for environmental, energy, and public land issues located in Logan, Utah. The organization received money from the Charles Koch Institute.

The organization was connected to the Utah State University’s Institute of Political Economy through Dr. Randy Simmons. Simmons was the “Charles G. Koch Professor of political economy” at Utah State from 2008 through 2013 and was the President and Director of Research for Strata. In addition to serving as the Koch Professor at Utah State, Simmons also runs the “Koch Scholars” Program, which receives an annual grant from the Charles Koch Foundation.

In 2016, the Charles Koch Institute contributed $1,677,500 to Strata. In 2015, the Charles Koch Institute contributed $25,000 while the Charles Koch Foundation contributed $310,000. And in 2014, Strata received a single $1.1 million contribution from the Charles Koch Foundation in addition to receiving $26,600 from the Charles Koch Institute.

Utah State University, which housed Strata research and publications, also had received funding from both Charles and David Koch –at least $1.6 million. This funding made Utah State a top recipient of money from Koch-linked foundations among all colleges.

In 2015, Strata was awarded a contract by the Utah state government to help with “public relations work” around the state’s attempt to seize 31 acres of America’s public lands to the state.

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exxonknews substack

ymail 8 24

is combating climate disinformation an essential part of the climate fight, or a “condescending,” “cheap hack” of the elite?

A much-discussed piece by academic and author Holly Jean Buck in Jacobin this week argues the latter. Buck laments that “much of the climate movement” — exemplified in her account by lawmakers leading Congressional hearings, academics convening conferences, reporters covering what a UN official said, and nonprofit organizations founded to track and counter disinformation — is “obsessing” over “an information war focused on uncovering what Big Oil knew and policing speech.” In Buck’s opinion, focusing on disinformation is distracting from the real work of engaging with communities empathetically to understand the challenges of a clean energy transition and to implement funds granted by the Biden Administration’s Infrastructure Reduction Act (IRA).

Buck, who previously worked in communications for the Department of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, relies on the valid trope that D.C.-based writers and pundits often misunderstand the real concerns of many Americans. But she uses it to claim that “When the anti-climate disinformation movement redefines all opposition to green transition efforts as ‘climate denial,’ the effect is to cast reasonable disagreements about the best way forward in terms of disputes over the truth.”

From where I sit — albeit as someone covering fossil fuel industry disinformation for a living — that argument is a misrepresentation. Tackling climate deception isn’t about demeaning the real concerns of people who “understand — often in ways office workers like me don’t — the complexity of building out new systems,” or about labeling those people as having been “programmed by a fossil-fueled conspiracy.” It’s about specifically documenting and calling out the spread of falsehoods when they come from the industry interests working to prevent change — both at the national and local level, and often under cover of front groups and powerful institutions. Would calling out the tobacco industry’s disinformation campaigns have insulted consumers’ ability to choose, or stalled public health efforts?

The idea that combating disinformation is “policing speech” and a distraction from real solutions are talking points often used by the fossil fuel industry itself. And it misses a crucial point: that through disinformation, profit-motivated oil and gas companies are helping determine where public funds are directed — often away from renewables, and toward technologies that will further entrench fossil fuels in the decades to come.

Two recent reports help illustrate those stakes, and why tracking and exposing deception is crucial to climate action on the ground.

The victims of misinformation

Buck writes that “Treating the public as victims of misinformation is condescending and serves to reinforce the idea that coastal elites just want to tell them what to think and how to live.” But as Genevieve Guenther responded on X, “‘the public’ also includes the chattering classes themselves, who often know little about climate science or solutions, and the mainstream liberals and centrists they educate on the topic. It even involves policymakers, who of course are not climate experts.”

In fact, the power policymakers have in determining how public money is spent makes them a prime target of climate disinformation — and one of the most important audiences for accountability reporting and advocacy.

According to a report released today by research and advocacy group Oil Change International, governments in North America and Europe have spent a combined $30 billion in public funds on carbon capture and fossil hydrogen projects to date. That includes $4 billion spent by the United States and Canada to subsidize carbon capture technology used for “enhanced oil recovery,” the process of pumping carbon under the ground to get more oil.

For years, oil companies have worked to sell carbon capture as a solution to climate change that wouldn’t necessitate phasing out oil and gas, even while they knew internally that the technology would barely make a dent in global carbon emissions in the best-case scenario. According to Oil Change International, their ploy worked.

The report documents how ExxonMobil played a major role in lobbying the U.S. Congress for tax credits and subsidies, switching from carbon capture skeptic — acknowledging that the technology was too expensive, polluting, and energy intensive — to supporter after realizing it could make trillions in revenue while shifting the conversation away from renewables.

In 2021, Exxon pushed Congress to fund carbon capture — and the IRA granted $12 billion toward “carbon management research, deployment, and demonstration.” That same year, the company launched its Low Carbon Solutions business. Exxon CEO Darren Woods said on an earnings call that he was “very encouraged” by how the conversation about energy transition was shifting away from “whether or not you're both investing in solar and wind.”

When that wasn’t enough, the company lobbied for higher subsidies — and got some of its demands in segments of a carbon capture bill passed as part of the IRA in August of 2022. In 2023, Exxon told investors it expected “double-digit” returns from its Low Carbon Solutions business. “I am very supportive of the IRA — because as legislated the IRA focuses on carbon intensity and in theory is technology-agnostic,” Woods said at an oil summit this year.

Thanks to the IRA’s changes to the carbon capture tax credit known as 45Q, U.S. taxpayers could spend up to $100 billion on CCS in the coming decade, according to Oil Change International’s analysis. “Exxon and other oil companies worked the U.S. Congress like a well-oiled machine,” the report reads. “They used the American public’s increasing concern about the climate crisis to deliver a massive transfer of taxpayers’ money to corporate coffers.”

Not just NIMBY

In her piece, Buck argues that “We shouldn’t confuse cheap discursive battles with the actual work of climate action, which, at the end of the day, is remaking physical systems to replace the 80 percent of fossil energy that now powers our lives with clean energy.”

But it’s hard to imagine how that actual work will get done when the transition to wind and solar energy is being undermined on the ground — not by individual concerned residents speaking on their own behalf, but by fossil fuel interests with a major stake in the game.

In July, the watchdog group Energy and Policy Institute published a report compiling more than a decade of research showing how the fossil fuel industry uses dark money front groups, political operatives, and prominent anti-renewable activists to spread disinformation about clean energy — all “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.”

The sources of funding EPI identified include major industry players like Exxon, Koch, and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers. But there’s also a wide network of local efforts such as Citizens for Local Choice, a ballot campaign opposing streamlined renewable energy siting in Michigan, which has received funding from an Ohio gas industry executive. Or the Empowerment Alliance, a dark money group that attacks wind and solar power and has fought to redefine gas as “green energy” in Ohio. Just this week, Energy Network News reported funding ties between the Empowerment Alliance and an Ohio anti-solar energy group posing as a “grassroots” advocate for local farmers.

Dave Anderson, who authored the report, said there is a big difference between community members with valid reasons for questioning renewable energy projects and fossil-fuel-backed campaigns or anti-renewables activists who became paid consultants for the industry. “You start looking into these key actors who've become known for traveling state to state, through vast regions of the country, doing these presentations, attacking wind and solar farms,” Anderson said. “If you push them hard enough, you'll find that they're not just NIMBY activists trying to block a wind farm in their town, they're literally going place to place fighting wind and solar farms all over the country and sometimes world with the support of these outside groups.”

The report was spurred in part by a recent announcement by the State Policy Network, a national nonprofit network of think tanks and advocacy groups funded by fossil fuel interests, that it will work with state lawmakers this year to oppose wind and solar power.

“There's an unprecedented amount of public funding that's going to support wind and solar projects all over the country right now,” Anderson said. “So it's not surprising that you're seeing groups like the State Policy Network saying our specific goal legislatively is now to just block the deployment of wind and solar.”

Where the money goes

Combating climate disinformation isn’t just about tracking how public money is being spent and why — it’s also about deciding who should pay for the damage that disinformation caused.

Because ultimately, your average American isn’t just pondering heat pumps — many are dealing with the aftermath of deadly and devastating floods, fires, heatwaves, hurricanes, and other disasters intensified by the continued burning of fossil fuels. Until and unless fossil fuel companies are held accountable, the damage will continue to get worse — and communities on the front lines will be footing the bill.

It should go without saying that both things are needed. The climate movement can and should expose climate disinformation and work with communities to implement solutions in just and equitable ways. And local journalists can bridge the gap between both, as long as they’re given funding to do so.

Combating deception and pursuing real climate action aren’t mutually exclusive — they’re necessarily intertwined. Who does it serve to frame it any other way?

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ref report

Fueling the Opposition: How Fossil Fuel Interests Are Fighting to Kill Wind and Solar Farms Before They Are Built

Fueling the Opposition

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

Click here to download the full report as a PDF

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:

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: ....

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Fueling the Opposition: How Fossil Fuel Interests Are Fighting to Kill Wind and Solar Farms Before They Are Built

a### nti-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(https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QEZy450AR-6-iTNUOlslT8HzmnFAik8pMFt2QhpSY7k/edit#bookmark=id.ozwnc9q5gxxy)

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 2020MasterResource 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 FAQpage 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.

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https://naturalresources.house.gov/imo/media/doc/2022.09.14%20Hearing%20Report_PR%20Firms%20Preventing%20Action%20on%20Climate%20Change.pdf

2. Third-Party Mobilization

The general public is less likely to be convinced by a narrative that appears only to serve a special

interest, especially one with significant reputational liabilities, such as the oil and gas industry. PR

firms consequently work to make the industry’s positions seem widely supported by a range of

ostensibly unrelated groups, manufacturing the appearance of representing the broader public

interest.32 This tactic can take the form of third-party spokespersons, “generating favorable media

coverage, attributing advertisements to [a] third-party group instead of to the organization, creating

supportive social media, and mobilizing “astroturf” groupsof public supporters.”33 Oil and gas

companies have also created and funded nonprofit entities, which they used to organize opposition

to climate policies.

34 Through these front groups, the industry has funneled tens of millions of

dollars to public relations firms to manage media campaigns.35

A prominent example of such an approach is the successful defeat of a 2016 effort to put on the

Colorado ballot two initiatives that would have altered Colorado’s constitution to (1) give local

municipalities the ability to ban fracking, and (2) prevent oil and gas development within a 2,500-

foot buffer zone from occupied buildings and parks, waterways, playgrounds, and other “areas of

special concern.”36 Seeing an existential threat to its “license to operate,” Noble Energy, a major

natural gas company operating in Colorado (later bought by Chevron), hired PR firm Story

Partners to help it prevent these safeguards from becoming law.

The Committee has obtained documents that reveal, in the PR firm’s own words, howStory

Partners successfully designed and executed its multipronged plan to defeat the initiatives at the

signature-gathering stage (Appendix 5). Story Partners achieved this through tactics including

astroturfing and careful analysis of which kind of message was most likely to persuade people that

the ballot measure would economically harm not onlyNoble Energy and “the industry at large,”

but the general public as well.37 This campaign and its techniques are discussed in greater detail in

the final section of this memorandum.

Third-party mobilization can also directly reach policymakers and their staff. Following the

Russian invasion of Ukraine, House Natural Resources Committee staff received a series of seven

...p 11

Staff from “HBW Resources” sent the emails and identified themselves as representatives of CEA,

describing it as “a nationwide grassroots organization that supports energy policies ensuring

abundant, affordable, reliable, and sustainable domestic energy supplies.”CEA claims to have

more than 550,000 individual members and to represent “a broad list of organizations that include

farmers, academia, conservation groups, truck drivers, laborers, trades-people, energy producers,

manufacturers, business owners to so much more.”51

Watchdog organization Energy and Policy Institute calls CEA an industry front group, and its

positions align closely with fossil fuel interests. CEA has been accused of engaging in astroturfing

on behalf of the major extractive energy industries.52 The organization received a score of “E-”

from LobbyMap (on an “A+” to “F” scale) on their climate policy’s alignment with the goals of

the Paris Agreement, reflecting CEA’s work to obstruct climate policy and energy transition at the

state and national level.53

HBW Resources, a self-described “government affairs, advocacy, public relations, and

communications firm,”54 appears to run CEA. The organization is run out of HBW’s Houston-based office.

55 IRS forms indicate that CEA has no paid staff and its chief officers include HBW

employees, such as CEA President and Director—David Holt—and Vice President—Michael

Whatley.

56 Since 2010, HBW Resources has been CEA’s highest paid contract by far. Over this

time, 53% of all of CEA’s expenses were paid to HBW, totaling nearly $17 million.57

Large sums

were also paid to two PR firms currently under investigation by this Committee, FTI Consulting

and Story Partners.58

p 12

The source of CEA’s funding is unclear. Since 2010, CEA has reported revenues of over $34.7 million made up almost entirely of contributions and grants.59 As a registered 501(c)(4) organization, CEA is not required to disclose its donors. 60 However, CEA’s members include major oil corporations such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell USA.61

3. Delegitimization of OppositionDelegitimizing competing narratives is the final major strategy PR firms use to shore up the fossil fuel industry’s messages.62 PR firms use a range of tactics to undermine other narratives and their messengers, from disputing the facts to attacking individuals and organizations’ “reliability and reputations.”63 The following case study illustrates the extreme and unethical methods some PR firms use. Industry Defeat of Colorado Anti-Fracking Ballot Measures

...

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...reaffirmedNoble Energy as a strong partner in the community.”74 Meanwhile, print and digital

advertisements “creatively told the story of the unintended consequences of the proposed ballot

measures,” and “informed voters of the products and services dependent on oil and natural gas,

both from a funding point of view and from a resources perspective.”75 These narratives position

Noble as a socially responsible member of the community, while eliding the full environmental

and public health burden the fossil fuel industry creates in Colorado.

These advertisements against proposed fracking restrictions ran “under the brand of the South

Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce (SMDC),” and “concurrently under the banner of the

Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA),” creating the illusion of third-party mobilization.

76 Notably,

“guerilla marketing teams attended dozens of Colorado events and engaged hundreds of thousands

of citizens.”77Story Partners’ budget for this campaign is not public information, but CEA’s tax

filings show that the organization paid the PR firm $535,442 in 2016 for “communications,”

presumably for this effort.

78

Story Partners called the campaign a “huge success,” and “an enormous, measurable achievement

for Noble Energy.”79 The PR firm noted that a survey, “after just two months of campaign activity,

indicated that support for the specific ballot measures dropped to its lowest point in our research,

and opposition to the measures had increased. For the first time, support for the measures was

under 51 percent, and it was clear the campaign messages were working and recalled.”80 The PR

campaign had successfully stopped climate legislation.

Two years later, there was an effort to revive the buffer zone ballot measure. Proposition 112(aka

initiative 97) was a 2018 Colorado ballot initiative designed to mandate that new oil and gas

development, including fracking, be sited a minimum distance of 2,500 feet from occupied

buildings such as homes, schools, hospitals, and other areas designated as vulnerable. The measure

was brought by grassroots environmental group Colorado Rising.81

Industry pushback was coordinated, sophisticated, and heavily funded. Oil and gas firms funneled

millions of dollars into coordinated PR campaigns to defeat Proposition 112.82 Oil and gas industry

[CRED protect colo]

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attempted to end their contract while demanding additional payments.96,97 When Colorado Rising

contracted with another signature-gathering firm, the firm broke the contract several days later. In

a recorded conversation shared with the Committee, a subcontractor admitted to taking a bribe of

“a lot” of money to stop working with Colorado Rising. He also stated the people who paid him

off had asked him to give them the signatures he had gathered for Proposition 112, but he did not

confirm or deny that the request came from Protect Colorado, the Pac/West front group. (Appendix

7(a))

98

Volunteers for Colorado Rising also experienced harassment in their volunteer and personal

capacities. Members of the opposition attempted to infiltrate their campaign trainings, showed up

repeatedly at their press conferences and outside their campaign office to monitor them, and

monitored the campaign’s delivery of signatures to the Secretary of State’s office. In her personal

life, the witness was followed around town by unidentified men – who also showed up to record

Colorado Rising press conferences – and received unsolicited texts from one of the people who

attempted to infiltrate their campaign (Appendix 7(b)).

99 Another lead volunteer received

harassing mail at her home address (Appendix 7(c)).[gun in waitband?]

100

CONCLUSION

For decades, the oil and gas industry denied or downplayed climate change and its role in causing

it. Now that fossil fuel companies and trade groups can no longer get away with outright denial,

they pay millions to PR firms to wage sophisticated and varied campaigns that go far beyond mere

marketing. These efforts include falsely depicting industry as joining the fight against climate

change, engineering astroturf “citizen” groups to advocate for industry interests and defeat

legislative proposals, and using unscrupulous tactics to sabotage genuine policy solutions and

attack community advocates. These modern techniques are arguably far more insidious than the

denialism of the past, thanks to the pivotal involvement of PR firms.[long appendix rich st'd CEA, threat ltr]

===