Editor’s Note: This article is part of the DOGE Files, a series of CRC investigations into federal grants to nonprofits. This article explores a grants made to opponents of nuclear power.
During the last half of the Biden administration, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm began talking up the virtues of reliable, safe, and carbon-free nuclear energy. In August 2024 she called for constructing 98 more of our largest nuclear reactors—enough to power 50 million additional American homes.
But as she said this, Granholm’s own department and others within the Biden administration were putting the last touches on $485 million in combined grant awards for 20 opponents of nuclear power.
This help wasn’t needed. The known opponents of nuclear energy collectively rake in at least $2.5 billion every year.
To put this in perspective, the Nuclear Energy Institute, the main trade association promoting American nuclear power, reported a mere $57.3 million annual revenue in its last publicly available IRS filing. At least seven strident anti-nuclear nonprofits, such as the Sierra Club, reported double or even triple that amount.
But elections have consequences. The Biden-era grant awards were approved grants, and the recent work of the Department of Government Efficiency has in many cases clawed back or blocked the total awarded spending.
Big Winners
With $313.8 million in total Biden-era grant awards, Grid Alternatives was set to become the biggest of the anti-nuclear winners.
This would have been a nearly 100-fold increase over all federal funding approved for Grid Alternatives from 2008 through 2020. This is typical of the Biden-era anti-nuclear grants. Most of the other 19 awardees had received comparably little or even zero federal funding prior to 2021.
As covered in a previous report, most of the approved funding for Grid Alternatives was to come from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to be used for hanging solar panels in low-income communities.
Grid Alternatives advertised its hatred of nuclear power long before the first grant was approved. The nonprofit cosigned a 2019 letter to Congress that referred to nuclear power as “dirty” and opposed its inclusion in any carbon-cutting energy policy.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) was approved for $55.5 million in grants from several different agencies and departments during the Biden administration, more than half of it from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The WWF denounced a 2019 proposal from the European Union to include nuclear energy as a carbon-reduction tool, saying in a 2021 news release that doing so would be “greenwashing.”
The World Resources Institute (WRI) was approved for $43.6 million during the Biden years, most of it from USAID and the State Department. Impeding energy progress in developing nations is part of this nonprofit’s mission. In April 2018, WRI gave an “environmental prize” to a pair of South African activists for their work in blocking a $76 billion nuclear power investment in their homeland.
In 2023, the Department of Agriculture approved a $25 million grant for GreenLatinos. This sum was more than double the combined revenue raised by GreenLatinos from 2010 through 2023.
GreenLatinos consigned a May 2021 letter to Congress that opposed nuclear power and referred to it as a “dirty” energy source.
Other Anti-Nuclear Nonprofits
Here are the 16 other known anti-nuclear nonprofits that were approved for Biden administration grants, along with the approved cumulative total funding:
- Deep South Center for Environmental Justice ($11 million),
- Alianza Americas ($8.7 million),
- Rocky Mountain Institute ($7.8 million),
- Climate Policy Initiative ($6.9 million),
- Environmental Defense Fund ($6.6 million),
- Southern Alliance for Clean Energy ($2.8 million),
- Institute for Local Self-Reliance ($2.3 million),
- Appalachian Voices ($2.4 million),
- Buffalo-Niagara Waterkeeper—part of the anti-nuclear Riverkeeper network ($2 million),
- Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League ($365,000),
- Berkshire Environmental Action Team ($300,000),
- Milwaukee Riverkeeper ($200,000),
- Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah ($200,000),
- Columbia Riverkeeper in the Riverkeeper network ($150,000),
- Hazon ($82,000), and
- Endangered Species Coalition ($72,000).
In addition to the federal departments and agencies already listed, the Biden-era anti-nuclear grants were also awarded by the Department of Interior, the Department Health and Human Services, the Federal Communications Commission, the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Department of Commerce, NASA, and the Denali Commission.
Opponents of Civilization
The 20 anti-nuclear groups winning those awards also oppose the use of hydrocarbon fuels: oil, natural gas, and coal. This means they oppose 88 percent of all the energy used in America. As energy is the life blood of prosperity, it’s not an exaggeration to say these groups are implicitly opponents of industrial civilization itself.
Approval of these grants was in effect an attempt to force federal taxpayers to fund their own economic destruction. Going forward, perhaps federal grant seekers should be required to answer a rigorous set of questions regarding whether they have a position in opposition to the sources of American wealth and civilization that they are hoping to tap.
