Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach urged the Department of Justice on Monday to investigate Energy Foundation China over concerns it is tied to the Chinese Communist Party and advocating green energy regulations that target United States energy producers.
Kobach accused EFC of funneling millions in funding to environmental groups, allowing them “to file climate litigation and to advocate for statutes that weaken American energy producers and hurt consumers.”
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“The EFC claims to be a nonprofit headquartered in San Francisco, but its staff is concentrated in Beijing and has close ties to the CCP,” Kobach wrote in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi. “Not surprisingly, the EFC appears to support actions that align with China’s strategic interest in boosting alternative energy production systems in which China controls crucial supply chains for necessary minerals, batteries, solar panels, and other energy technologies.”
The letter also referenced a recent Senate hearing in which Kobach, along with lawmakers such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), raised concerns that China is using the EFC to undermine U.S. energy operations in courtrooms and state legislatures, and fears that Beijing is wielding the organization to influence higher education.
“This CCP connection — centered around the EFC — places a whole new lens over the climate lawfare campaign occurring in U.S. courts. … When such legal actions are tied to China, it likely reveals a foreign adversarial attack on American energy independence,” Kobach said. “Multiple federal laws are designed to stop inappropriate foreign influence, misdirection, and economic sabotage like this.”
Kobach’s letter was applauded by groups such as State Armor, a nonprofit organization focused on global security matters that has expressed deep unease over allegations that China is sabotaging the U.S. energy industry. A recent report by the group titled “Who Is Energy Foundation China?” outlined concerns about who funds the EFC and investigated the group’s ties to the CCP.
“AG Kobach is absolutely right to call for an investigation into EFC, which is clearly a CCP sock puppet undermining and destroying American energy independence through heavily-funded influence operations and constant lawfare campaigns, as State Armor exposed out in our recent report,” State Armor CEO Michael Lucci said in a statement to the Washington Examiner on Tuesday. “No sane country would allow its strategic adversary to severely damage its national security, control its energy supply chains, and insert kill switches into its energy grid, all driven through united front influence operations.”
“Every day Communist China is waging a war on American energy to make us more reliant on technology that is built and controlled by the CCP,” he continued. “While environmentalists call this ‘green energy,’ in reality it’s largely ‘red tech’ controlled by Communist China and chock full of kill switches to disable our energy grid. As part of their strategy to control our energy grid and supply chains, they control non-profits and co-opt left-wing environmental groups to drive the CCP’s agenda through our own court systems and universities.”
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State Armor’s concerns come as some policy analysts, including at the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation, have argued that China’s support of certain green energy policies is part of a broader strategy to “transform its energy resource vulnerabilities into a net advantage” because Beijing dominates global supply chains for critical components such as batteries, turbines, critical minerals, and more.
They claimed that Chinese-linked environmental charities have “hijacked” the U.S. environmental movement for Beijing’s benefit.