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- Assets: $22,678,999 (2005)
- Grants Received: $27,585,414 (2005)
- Grants Awarded: $17,783,276 (2005)
The Energy Foundation began as a project of Trust For Public Land. Its original $20 million endowment in 1991 came jointly from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The Mertz-Gilmore Foundation joined that trio as a funding partner in 1996, as did the McKnight Foundation in 1998, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation in 1999, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in 2002.
The Energy Foundation lists its current partners as the aforementioned MacArthur, Mertz-Gilmore, McKnight, Packard, and Hewlett Foundations. The Energy Foundation and its five partners are the primary financial backers of the Texas Fund for Energy and Environmental Education, the key attack group in the campaign against Exxon Mobil. The funders (which are heavily invested in shares of other oil and gas corporations) coordinate their anti-Exxon Mobil efforts with such groups as Greenpeace, Campaign Exxon Mobil, the SEED Coalition, CorpWatch, Pressurepoint, Uproar, the Ruckus Society, U.S. PIRG, the Green Party, Radical Encuentro, the Institute for Policy Studies, Global Exchange, the Midwest Academy, Downwinders at Risk, and Friends of the Earth.
In 2003 the major donors to the Energy Foundation were the Blue Moon Fund ($450,000), the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation ($7 Mil.), the McKnight Foundation ($8.1 Mil.) and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation ($4.5 Mil.). The combined contributions of these four entities accounted for fully 99 percent of the total grants received by the Energy Foundation during that year.
The Energy Foundation oversees several grantmaking programs, which it identifies and describes as follows:
(a) The Power Program works “to reduce carbon emissions from the electric and gas utility industry by advancing energy efficiency and renewable energy.”
(b) The Buildings Program supports “policies to increase the efficiency of U.S. homes and businesses, reducing global-warming emissions and saving consumer dollars.” Asserting that the heating, cooling, and lighting requirements of buildings account for about one-third of U.S. energy use, this program promotes the use of compact fluorescents and energy-efficient windows, and the adoption of stringent state and national appliance-efficiency standards and construction standards.
(c) The Transportation Program promotes " policies that reduce vehicle global-warming pollution and oil consumption” by means of “better conventional technologies” and a “rapid transition to advanced vehicles and fuels.” The Energy Foundation states that “the U.S. transportation sector produces about 8 percent of world global warming pollution and accounts for 18 percent of an increasingly tight world oil market each year.” The Transportation Program advocates the development of "farm-raised" fuels that convert farm waste (corn stover, wheat straw, rice straw) or dedicated crops (such as switchgrass) into ethanol or biodiesel fuels that can be blended with gasoline.
(d) The Climate Program aims to "develop and promote U.S. state and regional policies to reduce global warming pollution." Toward this end, it advocates carbon cap-and-trade programs; greenhouse gas plans and targets; and financial mechanisms like incentives or carbon taxes. (e) The China Sustainable Energy Program, launched in March 1999 by the Energy and Packard Foundations, strives "to assist in China's transition to a sustainable energy future by promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy.” The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation came aboard as a funding partner of this program in 2002.
The Energy Foundation provides large amounts of funding to organizations committed to the anti-capitalist agendas of radical environmentalism. Recipient groups seek to restrict and/or dismantle the activities of the automobile industry, the coal and gas industry, the electric power industry, the nuclear power industry, the construction industry, and the transportation industry – in short, the entire energy sector, which they deem the principal cause of the world's pollution problems.
Among the notable recipients of Energy Foundation grants are: the Tides Foundation; the Tides Center; the Natural Resources Defense Council; the Environmental Defense Fund; the Union of Concerned Scientists; the Sierra Club; the National Environmental Trust; the Public Citizen Foundation; Earth Day Network; the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund (PIRG); the World Resources Institute; the Izaak Walton League of America; the World Wildlife Fund; Environmental Media Services; the Rocky Mountain Institute; the Center for a Sustainable Economy; the Earth Island Institute; CERES; Redefining Progress; the Southern Environmental Law Center; the Dakota Resource Council; the Economic Policy Institute; Environmental Advocates; Friends of the Earth; the Environmental Working Group; the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy; Consumers Union of the United States; the Public Media Center; the Land Institute; Physicians for Social Responsibility; the Rainforest Action Network; Essential Information; Dakota Rural Action; the Worldwatch Institute; the Land Stewardship Project; Greenpeace; Americans for Equitable Climate Solutions; the Pacific Forest Trust; Strategies for the Global Environment; EarthSave International; the Alliance to Save Energy; Resources for the Future; American Rivers; the Conservation Law Foundation; Rails to Trails Conservancy; the Center for a New American Dream; the Civil Society Institute, Inc.; Clean Air Cool Planet/A Northeast Alliance; the PCL Foundation; the Ecology Center, Inc.; the Center for Clean Air Policy; the Environmental Law and Policy Center of the Midwest; Global Green USA; the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility; the Keystone Center; the Latino Issues Forum; the Media Resource Group; the National Consumer Law Center; the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, Inc.; the Public Utility Law Project of New York, Inc.; the Sustainable Energy Coalition; the Tellus Institute; the Wilderness Society; the Western Resources Advocates; the Bluewater Network; the Center for International Environmental Law, Inc./U.S. Climate Action Network; and Climate Solutions.
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