Energy Innovation CEO Sonia Aggarwal, a former Biden climate adviser, goes unmentioned in coverage of her firm’s study
Recent reports in NPR, CBS News, and CNBC have cited a study from “nonpartisan” research firm Energy Innovation to argue that President Donald Trump’s repeal of green energy subsidies will cause energy prices to spike. Those reports did not mention the firm’s CEO and cofounder: Sonia Aggarwal, a former Biden climate adviser who helped write those very subsidies into law.
Energy Innovation’s study, which also generated coverage in CNN and the Chicago Tribune, argues that Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill will lead to higher energy prices for U.S. households by phasing out green energy subsidies and slowing electric vehicle purchases. It’s the latest in a long line of studies from the firm, which is known to produce research warning of the downsides to oil and gas while extolling the benefits of green energy alternatives.
Such research is aligned with Aggarwal, who cofounded Energy Innovation in 2012 to “mitigate climate change by promoting the most effective and equitable energy policies” and usher in “a safe climate future.” Aggarwal left the firm in 2021 to serve as the Biden White House’s senior adviser for climate policy and innovation. In that role, Aggarwal was “instrumental” in shaping the Inflation Reduction Act, which put hundreds of billions of dollars behind the subsidies Trump is ending.
Aggarwal’s partisan affiliations—and her work spearheading the subsidies her firm’s research defends—provide much-needed context that was excluded from the recent reports citing her firm’s “nonpartisan” research. Aggarwal, who returned to Energy Innovation upon leaving the White House in 2022, is not mentioned in those reports.
Kenny Stein, vice president of policy at the Institute for Energy Research, said Energy Innovation’s One Big Beautiful Bill study makes a number of faulty assumptions: that more wind and solar power production automatically lowers electricity prices, that any spending on new power generation—green or otherwise—is a positive, and that fewer EV sales will lead to higher fuel costs.
In other words, Energy Innovation didn’t properly analyze the impacts greater wind and solar reliance have on consumers, Stein told the Washington Free Beacon. “They make the grid harder to operate, they make the grid more unreliable, and they make the grid more expensive,” he said.
Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Ben Lieberman echoed that assessment. “The best way to ensure low energy prices is to have market competition with minimal government interference, and the OBBBA takes several steps in that direction,” he said.
Energy Innovation did not return a request for comment.
Aggarwal rose to the role of CEO at Energy Innovation in February 2023, when the firm’s fellow founder, Hal Harvey, began a transition into retirement. A veteran climate activist, Harvey is far from “nonpartisan”—he’s worked at the left-wing Hewlett Foundation and donated nearly $130,000 exclusively to Democrats since 2019. He also maintains an extensive network of left-wing climate organizations.
In 2020, eight years after launching Energy Innovation, Harvey founded a climate nonprofit, the Climate Imperative Foundation, which has since spent hundreds of millions of dollars on green energy activism. Some of that money—$47 million—has gone to Energy Innovation for management, research, and consulting services, federal tax filings show, and the two entities share several senior staff members, including Aggarwal. Other grants have backed some of the most powerful left-wing climate groups in America, including the Sierra Club, Climate Power, Environmental Defense Fund, League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, Rocky Mountain Institute, the Green New Deal Network, and American Council on Renewable Energy.
Not all of the foundation’s spending, however, has stayed in the United States.
Between 2021 and 2023, the foundation gave a staggering $68.8 million to Energy Foundation China, a group led by a number of former Chinese government officials. In 2020, meanwhile, the foundation reported that it provided $8.6 million to an undisclosed entity in support of China’s 14th 5-year plan. For decades, the Chinese Communist Party has issued such plans, which serve as the central document outlining its future social and economic aspirations. Chinese president Xi Jinping was personally involved in drafting the 14th iteration, which was published in 2022 and remains in effect.
Harvey also boasts personal ties to Chinese officials. He once told former State Department climate envoy Todd Stern he was traveling to Beijing to meet with “Minister Xie, Su Wei, but also China Development Bank and som [sic] of the air quality officials,” according to a 2015 email obtained by Fox News. At the time, Xie Zhenhua and Su Wei served as the Chinese government’s top climate officials.
American Energy Institute CEO Jason Isaac dismissed the notion that Energy Innovation is a “nonpartisan” entity, calling it “just another mouthpiece in Hal Harvey’s climate activist network.”
“These groups churn out propaganda to justify electrification mandates that raise costs and undermine American energy independence,” he told the Free Beacon. “Climate Imperative has direct ties to Energy Foundation China, which has collaborated with the Chinese government on ‘decarbonization’ strategies designed to weaken the United States. Why are we letting Beijing-linked nonprofits shape American energy policy?”
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