An organization with ties to the Chinese Communist Party is quietly pushing left-wing climate research and lawfare to undermine U.S. energy producers and promote alternatives with CCP-controlled supply chains.
A new report from State Armor, an activist group critical of the CCP, details the activities of Energy Foundation China, a San Francisco-based nonprofit controlled by CCP members that supports climate research and activist organizations, and attempts to cultivate influence among public officials.
“Our report exposes how Energy Foundation China functions not as an independent nonprofit, but as a vehicle advancing the strategic interests of the Chinese Communist Party by funding U.S. green energy initiatives to shift American supply chains toward Beijing and undermine our energy security. Policymakers must act,” said State Armor CEO Michael Lucci.
Energy Foundation China’s campaign to promote green energy was the subject of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing Wednesday afternoon where witnesses spoke about China’s activities and how to combat them. The hearing also focused on climate lawfare, the attempt by left-wingers to enact preferred environmental policy through onerous litigation and sweeping blue-state laws.
One of the hearing witnesses, Capital Research Center president Scott Walter, detailed how foreign billionaires are pouring millions worth of funding into the American left, including Public Citizen, the organization headed by Democratic witness David Arkush. Hanjorg Wyss, a Swiss billionaire accused of sexual misconduct, has put over $500 million into progressive causes with a focus on environmentalist organizations.
Energy Foundation China has poured tens of millions of dollars into climate litigation organizations that file lawsuits to fight oil and gas projects, and bankrupt fossil fuel company. As a 501 (c)(3), the funding is detailed in Energy Foundation China’s publicly available tax filings as a U.S. nonprofit, Walter noted.
Walter also detailed the U.S. billionaires and progressive foundations backing climate litigation, and the activities of the Climate Judiciary Project, an environmentalist legal forum run by activist academics.
Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas), chairman of the Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights, outlined State Armor’s findings to kick off the hearing.
“China is the number one polluter on planet earth. Communist China emits more carbon than the United States and Europe combined. The answer is simple. Because this is not about climate. It is about global energy dominance and control,” Cruz said.
His opening statement also addressed the Climate Judiciary Project’s work to train judges on environmental law.
“Courts are not supposed to be laboratories for political activism, and judges are not supposed to be trained by the plaintiffs’ bar that is receiving their funding from the Chinese Communist Party. What we are witnessing is judicial capture, driven by ideology, powered by money, and tolerated by far too many,” Cruz said.
Energy Foundation China CEO Ji Zou is a former senior official at the CCP agency responsible for developing its five-year plans and overseeing national energy policy, Cruz noted. Zou was part of China’s climate negotiation team leading up to the 2015 Paris Agreement that demanded emissions reductions from the western world and not from China.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach (R) testified about the state of environmental lawfare and two different strategies activists and blue states have deployed. Kobach detailed the efforts states have put into adopting extraterritorial burdens: environmental laws that regulate industries with a scope that extends far beyond state borders.
Localities suing energy producers is the other threat Kobach mentioned because of the lawsuits’s purpose of driving national environmental policy through the courts. The lawsuits seek large sums of damages for alleged climate harm to the localities caused by fossil fuel companies. Kansas is one of several red states fighting back against the lawsuits and Kobach urged Congress to assert itself in promoting transparency and stopping states from attempting to usurp federal authority.
“What we’re seeing is not the rule of law, it’s lawfare. These lawsuits aren’t meant to succeed on the merits, they’re designed to exhaust, to intimidate, and to destroy America’s energy sector. Death by a thousand cuts,” Cruz said later in the hearing.
Arkush and Democratic lawmakers spent the hearing suggesting Republicans were promoting a McCarthyist conspiracy theory about China seeking to undermine U.S. energy production, despite the tax filings detailing the activities of Energy Foundation China. Democrats also focused on the consequences of climate change and the alleged efforts by fossil fuel producers to mislead the country on the effects of oil and natural gas extraction on the environment.
The Justice Department is fighting the attempts by blue states to gain climate-related damages from fossil fuel companies and enforce sweeping environmental regulations. It is doing so in accordance with President Trump’s executive order targeting blue state climate regulations and environmental lawfare.