Meet the Little-Known Left-Wing Dark Money-Funded Group That’s Shaping Federal Climate Policy
A little-known Boston-based organization focused on sustainability and the fight against global warming and fueled by millions of dollars in dark money funds has quietly established itself in recent years as a key player in policymaking. federal.
Ceres, a nonprofit advocacy organization founded in 1989, has in recent years established elaborate networks of financial institutions, pension funds, unions, and major multinational corporations, bringing those members together to implement shared left-wing climate policies. The group has simultaneously worked hand-in-hand with other environmental groups and federal and state policymakers to advance its agenda.
“Ceres is trying to push the climate agenda through subterfuge and harnessing the power of wealthy investment firms and large corporations,” Jason Isaac, founder and CEO of the American Energy Institute, told Fox News Digital.
“They are getting rich while they think they are saving the world. I say they are destroying the planet to save the Earth in their minds, and that the scourge of the Earth is us humans. At the same time, it turns out they are benefiting greatly of their defense, so they feel good about it. I call it a cult. It’s become their religion.”
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Mindy Lubber, CEO of Ceres, speaks during the United Nations Climate Action Forum: Race to Zero and Resilience in New York on September 21, 2022. (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Isaac’s American Energy Institute recently produced a report, shared exclusively with Fox News Digital, outlining how Ceres has become one of the country’s most influential climate organizations affecting policy. According to the report, Ceres is made up of three main member networks: the Investor Network, the BICEP Network and the Business Network.
The Ceres Investor Network includes more than 220 institutional investors, who manage a staggering $46 trillion in assets. That network, Ceres says, seeks to “accelerate the transition toward a fair, sustainable, net-zero emissions economy.”
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Ceres BICEP and Company Networks include companies such as Doordash, General Mills, HP, Ikea, Kaiser Permanente, McDonald’s, Nestlé, Netflix, Nike, PayPal, Salesforce, Starbucks and Unilever. They work to adopt uniform strategies to reduce emissions. For example, the BICEP Network contains a Corporate Electric Vehicle Alliance focused on “accelerating the transition to electric vehicles.”
“They are using their influence, their power and their money to impose these policies on Americans to the detriment of American energy producers and to the benefit of Chinese companies that now own or control more than 80% of the cobalt mines in Africa and the rest of the world. Congo to achieve our green dream goals, so to speak,” Isaac told Fox News Digital, referencing the production of critical minerals vital to the development of green energy technology.
“This, again, is to our incredible detriment as we are seeing a higher cost of electricity. We are seeing a higher number of electricity disconnections and a higher number of natural gas disconnections in American homes,” he added. “Expensive energy hurts the poor and I am working against policies that make energy more expensive.”
President Biden speaks at the White House during the Inflation Reduction Act celebration on September 13, 2022. Ceres executives Mindy Lubber and Dawn Martin attended along with Ceres partners from the private sector. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The American Energy Institute report also highlighted how Ceres has raised tens of millions of dollars to fund its operations. Most of Ceres’ funding came from left-wing grant-making foundations, such as the Rockefeller Family Fund, the New Venture Fund, the Climate Imperative Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation, which are not required to disclose individual donors, other than individual donors. who have remained anonymous.
According to Ceres’ most recent 990 tax return, between November 2021 and October 2022, it received $26.6 million in contributions and grants. The year before, it raised nearly $40 million for its operations. Two anonymous donors contributed 35% of the $26.6 million raised, while one donor was responsible for 14% of the $40 million raised, more financial documents showed.
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The New Venture Fund, a key cog in the billion-dollar left-wing dark money network Arabella Advisors, has alone transferred more than $5 million to Ceres since 2019.
Ceres declined to comment on the American Energy Institute report and its funding structure, instead pointing Fox News Digital to its most recent annual financial report that confirmed the numbers.
The group has also actively worked with and engaged Democrats in Congress on various issues, leveraging their stakeholder networks. For example, the group has helped develop policy with the Senate Climate Change Task Force, which includes Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Tom Carper, D-Delaware, and recently participated in an event focused on green investments with Senator Ed Markey. D-Mass., in Boston.
Ceres has collaborated with Senator Ed Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, who sponsored the Green New Deal, on numerous occasions. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Overall, Ceres has spent more than $1 million lobbying on federal environmental issues since 2017, according to federal data compiled by Open Secrets. Lobbyists hired by Ceres worked behind the scenes defending the Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats’ $739 billion tax and climate bill that President Biden signed into law in August 2022.
Ceres President and CEO Mindy Lubber and Executive Vice President Dawn Martin attended a ceremony on September 13, 2022 at the White House, where Biden touted the legislation.
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“We are going to take the most aggressive measures ever taken in the world to confront the climate crisis and increase our energy security. And that is not hyperbole, it is a fact,” the president commented during the ceremony.
Lubber, who previously served as regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and founded a green energy mutual fund, has visited the White House for meetings and ceremonies on at least five occasions since 2021. Martin joined Lubber in al least three of those visits.
Lubber also attended a July 2022 event where Biden announced climate-focused executive actions at the site of a closed coal plant in Somerset, Massachusetts.
President Biden speaks at the former Brayton Point Power Station in Somerset, Massachusetts, on July 20, 2022. (M. Scott Brauer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“For more than 30 years, Ceres has proven that sustainability is the only way to build a long-term economy,” Lubber said on the day of the White House Inflation Reduction Act ceremony he attended in September 2022.
“Our years of work organizing companies as advocates for meaningful climate policy helped bring together hundreds of leading companies and investors who tirelessly advocated for the climate, clean energy, and environmental justice investments that the Inflation Reduction Act has achieved.”
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Meanwhile, Ceres’ activities and widespread influence have attracted congressional scrutiny, particularly through its work bringing together stakeholders to take climate action together. House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, issued a subpoena to Ceres in June, alleging that the group could be facilitating collusion through its climate-focused initiatives, in violation of the law. United States Antitrust.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
“Corporations are collectively adopting and enforcing progressive environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals, and Ceres appears to facilitate collusion through Climate Action 100+ that may violate US antitrust law,” Jordan wrote to Ceres’ attorney. , Matthew Miller.
“To advance our oversight and inform potential legislation related to collusive ESG policies, the Committee must understand how and to what extent Ceres and Climate Action 100+ facilitate collusion to advance ESG-related goals.”
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A month later, Consumers’ Research, a consumer advocacy organization, produced a report for Jordan that outlined Ceres’ efforts to drive net-zero emissions goals at U.S. companies.
In an accompanying letter, group CEO Will Hild said Ceres has spearheaded a “decade-long coordinated effort led by Ceres to assert regulatory influence and organize shareholder activism, all with the goal of mandating disclosure.” climate that benefits and feeds the ESG. investment industrial complex.”
