Are China-Linked Organizations Affecting US Environmental Policies?

China-linked entities have their fingerprints on climate lobbying and lawsuits in the U.S., causing alarm among some lawmakers and watchdog organizations. 

“I don’t know the intentions. But whatever the intentions, policy after policy demonstrably strengthens China and weakens the United States,” Scott Walter, president of the investigative think tank Capital Research Center, told The Daily Signal of the green policies pushed by environmental groups that work with or receive funding from China. 

“The most obvious is forcing green energy and subsidies [for green energy]. China overwhelmingly procures the outputs,” Walter continued. “We are literally subsidizing China’s industry. Americans don’t want electric vehicles and electric stove mandates. And who makes most of the parts for these electric appliances? It’s not the U.S. It’s China.”

Though China is one of the world’s biggest polluters, it is also the largest supplier of green energy products. China supplies 78% of the world’s solar cells, 80% of the world’s lithium-ion battery chemicals, and 73% of the world’s finished battery cells, according to Just Facts, a research organization. 

But U.S.-based environmental organizations contend their partnerships with these entities make sense because global climate change problems can’t be addressed without working with organizations in China because of the impact of its massive carbon emissions on the rest of the world. Further, the groups stress that China-linked dollars used to fund these organizations are not used to affect U.S. policy. 

“We work in China for one reason: There’s not a single global environmental problem that the world can confront unless China is part of the fix,” Natural Resources Defense Council spokesperson Josh Mogerman told The Daily Signal in a statement. 

Push for Transparency

On June 25, a Senate subcommittee held a hearing titled “Enter the Dragon—China and the Left’s Lawfare Against American Energy Dominance.” Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, a Republican, was a witness at the hearing. 

In an interview with The Daily Signal, Kobach noted that an organization called the Chinese-American Planning Council lobbied the state of New York to pass the Climate Change Superfund Act to impose retroactive fines on fossil fuel producers. This led to 22 states—including Kansas—to sue New York state over the act and its fines. Plaintiffs argue the superfund would raise energy prices nationally. 

“China’s involvement was crystal clear in lobbying for the superfund law in New York,” Kobach told The Daily Signal. “We don’t have a clear picture of who is funding the county and local lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. But China has such a huge interest, it stands to reason they are probably also engaged in state and local litigation.”

A spokesperson for the New York-based Chinese-American Planning Council, which was established in 1965, did not respond to phone and email inquiries for this story this week or last week. The group’s website shows it has advocated for the superfund law.

Two bills in Congress would require more transparency regarding who is paying for the lawsuits. 

Rep. Ben Cline, R-Va., introduced the Protecting Our Courts From Foreign Manipulation Act. Cline’s bill would require the Justice Department’s National Security Division to report on foreign funding in federal litigation. The legislation would also require any foreign person or entity to disclose if it is a third-party funder of a civil lawsuit in federal court.

“In recent years, foreign adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party have grown bolder in their efforts to infiltrate and manipulate America’s legal system,” Cline told The Daily Signal in a statement. “Through third-party litigation funding, these actors aim to influence legal outcomes in ways that serve their political interests and threaten our national security.”

Cline added, “We must not allow the CCP or any foreign entity to undermine our legal institutions or the rule of law in the United States.”

A bipartisan version of the Cline bill was introduced in the Senate in 2023. 

Meanwhile, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., was the lead sponsor earlier this year of the Litigation Transparency Act of 2025, which would require the disclosure of those parties getting payments in civil lawsuits and the disclosure of the financing agreement between investors in and parties to these civil actions.

Climate Collaboration Backed by China

A big funder of U.S. climate groups has been the Energy Foundation China, based in San Francisco.

The foundation’s president and CEO is Ji Zou, a former deputy director general of China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, which is part of the Chinese government’s National Development and Reform Commission, according to the organization. 

Zou was also a member of the Chinese climate negotiation team leading up to the Paris Agreement, a multilateral climate deal which the Obama administration entered with China in an attempt to reduce carbon emissions. 

David Vance Wagner is the Energy Foundation China vice president for strategic development. He was previously a China counsellor in the Office of the Special Envoy for Climate Change at the State Department, and helped lead U.S.-China collaboration on climate, according to the Energy Foundation China.

 “Energy Foundation China (EFC) is an independent grantmaking charitable organization that provides funding for research and capacity building related to climate change and China,” Wagner told Fox News last month amid criticism of the organization. He added, “All grants we make support projects related to climate change and China, and are in no way related to influencing U.S. energy policy. EFC does not accept funding from any government or political party.”

Wagner went on to say: “Neither the Chinese government nor the CCP fund, direct, or control EFC or our grant-making decisions. We are compliant with all U.S. and Chinese laws and regulations and do not lobby or support electoral activities in any country.”

The Energy Foundation China did not respond to multiple email inquiries for this story last week and this week. The group’s website says over the past 25 years, it funded more than 4,000 projects, with total of more than $500 million. 

“Our work is currently focused on China given the scale of its energy sector and its role in global emissions,” the website says. It adds, “Despite geopolitical tensions, meaningful engagement in China on climate change, emissions reductions, and supporting the clean energy transition is in everyone’s interests.”

The coordinated campaign of pushing so-called green policies and green litigation in the United States is the strategic alliance of “leftist billionaires, radical environmental organizations, and the Chinese Communist Party,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said at the hearing last week of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights.

“One of the primary vehicles for this alliance is Energy Foundation China, which has funneled upwards of $12 million to U.S.-based climate advocacy groups,” Cruz said. “This money isn’t going to tree-planting campaigns or to science fairs. It’s flowing directly to aggressive litigation outfits like the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Rocky Mountain Institute, and the World Resources Institute—organizations that routinely file lawsuits trying to block [oil and gas] pipelines.” 

The World Resources Institute denied any role in litigation. 

“World Resources Institute is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that produces data-driven research. WRI does not participate in litigation or direct legal actions by others,” World Resources Institute spokesperson Allison Cinnamond told The Daily Signal. 

In 2017, the Rocky Mountain Institute, an environmental think tank, issued a report along with the Chinese government’s National Development and Reform Commission and other organizations. According to the report, the goal was to reach “a common factbase for how China could use energy efficiency and renewable energy to meet the growing demand of its population for a clean, low-carbon, efficient, safe, reliable, and cost-effective modern energy system.”

The RMI does not engage in litigation, a spokesperson noted. Further, all of the Energy Foundation China funding that it has received has been focused on tackling pollution in China, not shaping U.S. policy, the spokesperson said. 

“All of RMI’s work supported by Energy Foundation China, which is a U.S.-based charitable organization, is focused squarely on the energy transition inside of China,” Rocky Mountain Institute spokesperson Dina Cappiello told The Daily Signal. “It is factually inaccurate to state or imply that any of these funds were related to our U.S.-based work.”

The Rocky Mountain Institute works in China for a straightforward reason, she said. “RMI works in China because it is the world’s single largest source of energy demand and the world’s largest emitter of heat-trapping pollution, accounting for roughly a third of each.”

“Solving energy resource issues cannot happen without engaging China, nor can solutions solely depend on China,” Capiello continued. “RMI has shared its independent research and analysis with governments all over the world, including the U.S., China, India, and many others; diverse policymakers; corporations; and researchers and fellow nongovernmental entities, in order to accelerate the adoption of market-based solutions for efficient, affordable, resilient, and clean energy.”

The Natural Resources Defense Council also denies using China-linked resources to shape U.S. policy. 

“When developing our institutional positions—in the United States, India, China, or anywhere else in the world—we rely on our U.S.-based senior leadership and board of independent trustees, and no one else. We do the bidding of no government, in this country or any other,” said Mogerman, the spokesperson for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“NRDC does not take money from the Chinese government. NRDC used grant funding from the Energy Foundation China exclusively for work to help China cut pollution, not for U.S. advocacy or litigation,” Mogerman said. “Any assertion to the contrary is false.”

The California-China Climate Institute

Former California Gov. Jerry Brown launched the Californian China-Climate Institute at the University of California, Berkeley in 2019. The California-based institute partners with the Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development at China’s Tsinghua University, according to the Capital Research Center. That is the same Chinese university where hackers probed U.S. companies and government offices for espionage purposes in 2018, Reuters reported.

“The [California-China Climate Institute] was established to study and recommend actions to reverse catastrophic global warming, which can only be done if China—the world’s largest climate polluter—does its part,” an institute spokesperson told The Daily Signal in a statement. 

The California institute is affiliated with both the University of California Berkeley School of Law and the Rausser College of Natural Resources.

The spokesperson for the institute dismissed testimony from the Senate hearing about Chinese money backing U.S. environmental groups, and said the California-China Climate Institute “does not lobby or litigate.”

The post Are China-Linked Organizations Affecting US Environmental Policies? appeared first on The Daily Signal.