The Rocky Mountain Institute is a far-left, “environmentalist” organization that is best known for leading the campaign to ban gas stoves. But there is more to the organization’s radicalism than that, as energy expert Robert Bryce notes:
RMI is pushing these policies even though 69% of voters oppose bans on gas stoves. However, the gas bans are only one aspect of RMI’s radical agenda. In 2023, it published a report with the Bezos Earth Fund, which claimed, “the fossil fuel era is over.” Furthermore, RMI says it aims to “identify and scale energy system interventions that will cut greenhouse gas emissions at least 50 percent by 2030,” and claims it is “transforming the global energy system to secure a clean, prosperous, zero-carbon future for all.”
Energy extremism is profitable. In recent years, RMI has prospered to an extraordinary extent:
Where does all that money come from?
According to its latest annual report, RMI gets funding from the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Department of State, Department of Transportation, General Services Administration, and the US Trade and Development Agency. It is also getting funding from the International Finance Corporation and World Bank.
There is dark money from far-left donors, too, as well as contributions from some major corporations. But here are some numbers on the federal government’s support for RMI:
According to USASpending.gov, in 2023, RMI got $5.1 million from the Department of Transportation for the “thriving communities program capacity builders cooperative agreements.”
Last October, RMI announced it has been chosen to be a “key facilitator” for the Department of Energy’s “Energy Future Grants Program.” …
Another search on USASpending.gov found that RMI has been awarded $6.1 million in federal funding, including $4.6 million from the Department of Energy and $1.45 million from the State Department. But those figures may be too low. A graph on the USASpending.gov website shows that RMI was awarded $5.5 million in 2020, $340,000 in 2021, $5.3 million in 2022, $7.8 million in 2023, and $6.1 million in 2024. The sum of all those transactions is $25 million. Thus, based on data from USASpending.gov, RMI has received at least $11.2 million in federal funding over the past few years, and the total could be more than twice that sum.
Why is the federal government funding a left-wing propaganda machine that works adversely to the interests of Americans? And not just funding, but funding lavishly. This is how much RMI’s twelve most highly compensated employees are paid by their “nonprofit”:
It pays to be part of the left-wing money machine! Robert concludes:
The questions are also obvious: Why won’t RMI disclose the amount of funding it is getting from the federal government? What, exactly, is RMI being paid to do? Who in the Biden administration approved these contracts? And finally, who thinks it’s a good idea for federal taxpayers to be subsidizing the promotion of RMI’s radical anti-hydrocarbon agenda?
These are questions that Elon Musk, the Department of Government Efficiency, and new OMB Director Russell Vought, should be asking. And they should be asking them right damn now.
Amen.
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