The Department of Energy canceled two climate grants the Biden administration awarded to the Rocky Mountain Institute, a left-wing climate think tank that has pushed for heavy restrictions on gas stoves and that has collaborated with the Chinese government.
The first grant was worth about $5.3 million and designed to fund the Rocky Mountain Institute’s pilot project retrofitting a 120-unit building in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with green energy technology. Then-energy secretary Jennifer Granholm said in March 2022 the grant funding proved the Biden administration was “in an all-out sprint to beat the climate crisis” while Sen. Ed Markey (D., Mass.) said it would help protect the country “from upheaval caused by the global fossil fuel market.”
The second was a $1.5 million grant to fund research into the viability of electric vehicle carshare programs. The research, according to the Department of Energy, would assess business models in the United States for resilience and “equity.”
In a statement to the Washington Free Beacon, the Rocky Mountain Institute confirmed that the two grants were canceled. The Department of Energy, Rocky Mountain Institute spokeswoman Caroline Bennett said, informed the group that the funding “no longer effectuates program goals or agency priorities.”
The grant cancellations represent some of the first actions the Department of Energy has taken under President Donald Trump to claw back Biden-era spending and gut existing green energy programs. Led by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, the agency is conducting a sweeping department-wide review of spending and is expected to rescind a wide range of previously awarded climate-related grants and loans.
The Environmental Protection Agency, meanwhile, has already canceled $22 billion in climate grants disbursed under the Biden administration, citing financial mismanagement, conflicts of interest, and oversight failures.
“The Department of Energy is focused on delivering on President Trump’s pledge to lower energy costs, unleash American energy dominance, and promote the more efficient use of taxpayer dollars,” Department of Energy spokesman Ben Dietderich told the Free Beacon in a statement.
“The Department reviewed the contract to see if it met agency priorities and it did not,” he continued. “These contracts failed to advance any of these goals or priorities, and the Department acted in the best interest of the American people by terminating them.”
The Rocky Mountain Institute made headlines in 2023 after it emerged as a leader of the movement to ban gas stoves nationwide. The group funded a study that highlighted public health dangers posed by gas stove usage and was then cited in a Bloomberg article that included comments from a Biden official who said a gas stove ban was “on the table.”
Granholm boosted that study on social media, saying “we can and must FIX this.” In June 2021, Granholm met with former Rocky Mountain Institute CEO Jules Kortenhorst and, in March 2022, then-White House climate czar Ali Zaidi hosted three of the group’s leaders for a meeting at the White House, Fox News reported at the time.
And the Free Beacon reported that the Rocky Mountain Institute boasts a number of ties to the Chinese government. The group’s only office outside the United States is located in Beijing. It is also a member of the China Clean Transportation Partnership—a Chinese nonprofit whose founding members include China’s National Development and Reform Commission and Ministry of Transport—and its board member Wei Ding previously served as chairman of the China International Capital Corporation, a partially state-owned investment bank.
The group’s ties to China ultimately led to a number of congressional investigations.
“The Trump administration is right to pull taxpayer dollars from the Rocky Mountain Institute—a left-wing activist group masquerading as an energy think tank,” said Jason Isaac, the CEO of the American Energy Institute. “For years, RMI has pushed anti-American policies designed to cripple our fossil fuel industry, destroy grid reliability, and raise energy costs for working families.”
“This is a win for energy freedom, and a step toward restoring common sense in American energy policy,” Isaac said.
Michael Lucci, the founder and CEO of the group State Armor, added that the Chinese Communist Party “is committed to infiltrating all aspects of American life from U.S. critical infrastructure to our universities, and think tanks.” He said that state and local governments must now work to block China from having leverage over American companies, organizations, and institutions.
The Rocky Mountain Institute, meanwhile, has received millions of dollars from prominent left-wing nonprofits including the Energy Foundation, Sequoia Climate Fund, the Sergey Brin Family Foundation, the Climateworks Foundation, the Climate Imperative Foundation, the Windward Fund, the New Venture Fund, the Bloomberg Family Foundation, the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, according to tax filings reviewed by the Free Beacon.
“We continue to evaluate the impact of the current administration’s actions on our federally funded work, including the recently terminated EV charging infrastructure and building retrofit grants,” Bennett, the Rocky Mountain Institute’s spokeswoman, told the Free Beacon.
“Such moves will slow and at worst halt the myriad benefits of moving a clean energy agenda forward—including affordable energy costs for families and businesses; resilient community energy sources that support recovery and avert the root causes of natural disasters; and competitive and innovative industries that already provide good jobs throughout the U.S.,” she added.
The Associated Press first reported the grant cancellations.
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