Fred Taylor’s world war against energy

Australia is a land mass of nearly 3 million square miles—almost as large as the 48 contiguous American states. But in addition to its strange and venomous creatures, the Land Down Under is home to just 28 million humans—roughly the head count of Florida plus Louisiana. So, when an anti-energy climate NGO named Sunrise Project Australia banked $9 million in contributions from an American donor in 2023, the money went a long way. Adjusting for the population difference, getting equivalent messaging punch in the United States would have required the American to give $108 million—equal to the most recently reported combined annual income for the League of Conservation Voters and Greenpeace.

The donor was C. Frederick “Fred” Taylor, an enigmatic California billionaire who has quietly become one of the planet’s most influential climate radicals. Taylor’s mischief making money is routed through his Sequoia Climate Foundation. Non-existent, prior to 2020, Sequoia granted at least $252 million to CO₂-phobic causes just for the year ending December 2023. At least $143 million of this total, including the $9 million for Sunrise Australia, was shipped overseas.  (Taylor and his efforts to conceal his hefty lefty donations were covered in “The Sequoia Climate Foundation and America’s Secretive Climate Colonialist,” a report from the August/September 2024 issue of Capital Research magazine.)

Americans and our politicians have historically and sometimes justifiably worried over the possibility of foreign money influencing public opinion and policy here at home. Prominent examples of this concern have centered on individuals and governments from Russia, China, Israel, multiple Persian Gulf states, Ukraine, and even Switzerland.

But the raw fact is that the United States is the wealthiest nation on Earth, with more billionaires than anywhere else. Nobody can match the financial muscle of rich Americans when they decide to privately meddle in the rest of the world’s affairs. Moreso than most CO₂-obsessed billionaires, Fred Taylor has shown he understands the disproportionate impact his money can make if spent elsewhere.

Fred Taylor in the Land Down Under

On a per capita basis, the loot Sunrise Australia has gotten from Taylor was the equivalent of just one donor spending $342 million in the United States.

On a per-capita basis, it’s difficult to find another nation—including the United States—that has been impacted more by Taylor’s money than Australia.

Prior to the creation of Sequoia, Taylor made his climate donations through the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund. For the four-year period through the year ending November 2023, Sequoia and Wellspring combined granted $28.5 million to Sunrise Australia (which should not be confused with the Sunrise Movement Education Fund in the United States, though that too has been a Taylor grantee.)

On a per capita basis, the loot Sunrise Australia has gotten from Taylor was the equivalent of just one donor spending $342 million in the United States. Such a sum would almost double the Sierra Club’s most recently reported annual revenue for advocacy in America. And Sierra needed hundreds, if not thousands of wealthy donors to pull in that much money—only one of which was—no surprise—Sequoia!

Over the same four years through 2023, Sunrise reported raising a combined $229.2 million (Australian currency) from all sources—which is roughly $150 million in American dollars. So, the $28.5 million from Taylor (via Sequoia and Wellspring before that) amounted to roughly 20 percent of Sunrise’s total revenue.

Why has Taylor aimed his checkbook towards Australia?

Energy.

While Australia is ranked just 55^th in the world for population, those 28 million Aussies are sitting on the planet’s 3^rd largest coal supply, 18^th largest natural gas reserve and 38^th largest proven oil resources. A dollar spent convincing that relatively small number of people to keep their disproportionately huge supply of hydrocarbons in the ground is a dollar very efficiently spent. The Sequoia strategy may be hostile to the future of industrial civilization, but (relative to Taylor’s ideological agenda) it sure isn’t stupid.

The Sunrise Australia mission statement explains Sequoia’s support: “Driven by the imperative of climate justice, The Sunrise Project’s mission is to scale social movements to drive the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy as fast as possible.”

“Renewables” is the anti-energy NGO code word for weather-restricted wind and solar power systems. So, technologically, it rhymes with “unreliables.”

The great irony here is nuclear energy, which emits no pollutants and is the only source of limitless and reliable electricity without CO₂ emissions. Nobody beats Australia for nuclear fuel: it has 28 percent of world’s proven uranium reserves. This is more than the combined reserves of 2^nd place Kazakhstan, and 3^rd place Canada.

But nearly all uranium mined in Australia is exported because the Australian government has witlessly prohibited the use of commercial nuclear power at home. If Sunrise Australia endorses reversal of Australia’s nuclear policy, then it hasn’t said so loudly—if at all.

And Sequoia’s philanthropy bureaucrats haven’t been friendly to nuclear power. In 2023 alone, Taylor’s foundation sent at least $43 million to NGOs that are known to oppose nuclear power. And of the quarter-billion-dollars in 2023 grants, it’s difficult—if not impossible—to find a single recipient that is enthusiastic about expanding CO₂-free nuclear power.

Europe’s energy poverty

[Energiewende is] going so well that in October 2022 Germany started knocking down wind turbines so they could reopen a coal mine.

Seqouia has also made Europe a priority.

Through 2023, more than $145 million in combined grants funded by Fred Taylor (via Wellspring and then Sequoia) have been sent to the European Climate Foundation (ECF), located in the Netherlands.

Christie Ulman, the presumably American president of the Sequoia Climate Foundation, is a board member of the supposedly European Climate Foundation. Representatives from Bloomberg Philanthropies and the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, two of the biggest American funders of anti-energy climate groups, also have seats on the ECF board.

The biggest nations where ECF operates could be held up as poster children for economically suicidal climate and energy policy. According to World Population Review data for 2025, electricity in France is 78 percent more expensive than it is in the United States. The comparisons are even worse for the three other large European economies: 100 percent more expensive in Germany, 105 percent more in the United Kingdom, and 155 percent more in Italy.

Germany’s Energiewende (or “energy transition”) was the ill-fated early star performer in the race away from reliable energy. Energiewende even includes a phase out of the nation’s once-impressive fleet of nuclear power stations.

In 2012, the ECF co-founded Agora Energiewende, an advocacy think tank to promote what may be the worst policy move by German politicians since the waning days of World War II. It’s all going so well that in October 2022 Germany started knocking down wind turbines so they could reopen a coal mine.

These troubles were clear by April 2013 when The Economist reported that “the largest so-called renewable fuel used in Europe is wood” and that 38 percent of Germany’s “non-fossil fuel consumption comes from the stuff.”

Also in April 2013, the German magazine der Spiegel published a dismal progress report under this headline: “How Electricity Became a Luxury Good.”

“Germany’s aggressive and reckless expansion of wind and solar power has come with a hefty pricetag for consumers, and the costs often fall disproportionately on the poor,” began the account that was credited to the editorial staff of the center-left publication. Quoting an NGO that used the phrase “energy poverty,” der Spiegel reported that “more than 300,000 households a year are seeing their power shut off because of unpaid bills.”

The avalanche of criticism even found its way to Dissent, a stridently left-wing American journal. The Summer 2013 issue hosted an essay titled “Green Energy Bust in Germany” that summarized the situation this way:

… statistics on Germany’s electricity sector for the whole of 2012 are now in, and when you look beyond the cherry-picked hype, the results are dismal and disquieting. Despite massive construction of new capacity, electricity output from renewables, especially from wind and solar, grew at a sluggish rate. Germany is indeed avoiding blackouts—by opening new coal- and gas-fired plants. Renewable electricity is proving so unreliable and chaotic that it is starting to undermine the stability of the European grid and provoke international incidents. The spiraling cost of the renewables surge has sparked a backlash, including government proposals to slash subsidies and deployment rates. Worst of all, the Energiewende made no progress at all in clearing the German grid of fossil fuels or abating greenhouse emissions—nor is it likely to for at least a decade longer.

None of this deterred the European Climate Foundation. In 2016 ECF produced a report with this obtuse observation:

The importance of a successful German Energiewende cannot be underestimated: Decarbonising the world’s fourth-largest economy will inspire others to do the same. The European Climate Foundation (ECF)’s core objective in Germany is therefore to show that the Energiewende is technically, economically and socially feasible – as well as internationally scalable.

That was four years before Fred Taylor sent at least $145 million to ECF. He must appreciate the effort.

Importantly, that total covers tax filings through 2023. If Sequoia’s support has continued at the same level, which is reasonable to assume, given the current presence of the Sequoia president on the ECF board, then the total contribution could now be pushing $200 million. (The IRS routinely delays posting the mandatory filings from tax-exempt charitable nonprofits for more than a year, so information on Sequoia’s 2024 and 2025 grants was not available at the time this report was drafted.)

And ECF is just one European grantee for Sequoia. There are more than a dozen additional European-based climate and energy NGOs in on the Taylor gravy train. As an example: Sequoia’s 2023 tax filing shows nearly $16 million was sent to nonprofits based in the United Kingdom alone.

Climate colonialism

“Rich World Resources Institute” is a better name for a wealthy American nonprofit that openly brags about depriving the developing world of power.

Asia is another target for Taylor. In its 2023 tax filing, Sequoia reported two grants totaling $14.2 million for Singapore-based Tara Climate. Tara’s mission is to spread weather dependent power systems and fear of carbon dioxide across the Far East. Just like Agora Energiewende, Tara Climate was co-founded with funding from the ostensibly European Climate Foundation.

The enterprise is a textbook case of climate colonialism. The chair of Tara Climate’s board of directors is identified as a program director for the Sequoia Climate Foundation.

Tara’s 2023 annual report boasts of the increase in wind and solar energy use over the prior eight years in ten nations within their “Tara Region.” Three of the ten were Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines. According to Our World in Data, a combined 19.1 million people in those three nations were living with so little electricity that the best they could do was fire up basic home lighting and maybe charge a cell phone.

They needed modern, reliable power, not Tara’s climate colonialism.

The majority of the world’s energy poverty is in sub-Saharan Africa, where Our World in Data reports 596 million souls were living in these primitive power conditions as recently as three years ago. Taylor’s money has been active here as well.

Since 2021, Sequoia has granted a combined total of at least $19 million to the World Resources Institute (WRI). The InfluenceWatch profile of the World Resources Institute features this example of their policy agenda:

In 2018, WRI hosted an awards ceremony honoring two activists credited with blocking the construction of a nuclear power plant in South Africa. A WRI news release praised the pair for a “victory that protected South Africa from an unprecedented expansion of the nuclear industry. . .”

Four years later, according to Our World in Data, there were still 8.4 million South Africans living without regular and reliable access to electricity.

In a burst of unintended irony, the WRI main web page now claims that “Climate Action Has a Messaging Problem.” This is true: “Rich World Resources Institute” is a better name for a wealthy American nonprofit that openly brags about depriving the developing world of power.

The chairman of the board for the African Climate Foundation, which is based in South Africa, also has a seat on the World Resources Institute board of directors. This too is a recipient of Sequoia funding: at least $1.5 million so far.

Nearly 70 percent of world electricity is generated from the combination of coal, petroleum, natural gas and nuclear fuels. Access to and exploitation of these resources is helped the rich world become wealthy and stay there. Lack of same is arguably the main reason Africans are still poor.

One of the African Climate Foundation’s programs is titled “Energy Access and Transitions.” The web page for this program concedes that “600 million or 45% of Africans are without electricity.” And then it offers them this pitiful remedy: “. . . regional strategies to drive scale in renewable energy and green hydrogen.”

In a Christmas Carol, Ebeneezer Scrooge inflicted a similar ideology on his loyal yet freezing employee:

Garments were invented by the human race as a protection against the cold. Once purchased, they may be used indefinitely for the purpose for which they are intended. Coal burns. Coal is momentary and coal is costly. There will be no more coal burned in this office today, is that quite clear, Mr. Cratchit?

Bringing it home

As with nuclear power, there are more opportunities for exploiting America’s clean natural gas—at home and abroad. But some of the largest American beneficiaries of Sequoia Climate Foundation grants are opposed to both.

Taylor’s meddling with the rest of the world’s energy security via his Sequoia Climate Foundation has not prevented him from doing the same in his own nation.

Nuclear power is the largest source of emissions-free energy used in the United States and currently provides 18.6 percent of American electricity. We have the world’s largest fleet of civilian nuclear power stations. We could build far more of them, and the Trump administration has set an agenda to do just that.

After nuclear fuel, the next most clean and reliable fuel we have is natural gas. Compared to coal, natural gas emits roughly half the CO₂ when used to create electricity. The United States is the world’s natural gas superpower, producing almost as much as the combined output of second place Russia and third place Iran. (And neighboring Canada is in fourth place.)

Relative to 2007, by 2023 the switch from coal to natural gas in our electricity generation alone reduced total American CO₂ emissions by the equivalent of the total carbon-dioxide emissions from all sources (not just electricity) emitted by Germany and France combined. Put another way: American natural gas helped us cancel out the CO₂ emissions of two of the planet’s ten largest economies.

As with nuclear power, there are more opportunities for exploiting America’s clean natural gas—at home and abroad. But some of the largest American beneficiaries of Sequoia Climate Foundation grants are opposed to both.

Through 2023 Sequoia granted at least $21.6 million to the Natural Resources Defense Council. They are so obsessively opposed to natural gas that a 2021 NRDC analysis began with an objection to even calling it “natural.” And in 2021 alone, NRDC supported the shutdown of the Indian Point nuclear facility in New York and endorsed the (so far) unsuccessful retirement of California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant.

During the same period through 2023, total Sequoia Climate Foundation grants to the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and Sierra Club Foundation totaled $9.6 million and $6.6 million, respectively. Each can claim decades of high-profile hostility to natural gas and nuclear power.

The Sierra Club website has a “Nuclear Free Future” page that states the NGO is   “unequivocally opposed to nuclear energy.” The statement also makes the scientifically illiterate claim that nuclear is a “uniquely dangerous energy technology for humanity.” Similar to the NRDC, there is also a Sierra Club web page so dedicated to opposing natural gas that it even disputes that the name should be used.

The Rocky Mountain Institute was founded by Amory Lovins, one of America’s earliest and most successful anti-nuclear apostles. According to journalist Michael Shellenberger, “Lovins basic framework of transitioning from nuclear to renewables was promoted by David Brower and Friends of the Earth and eventually embraced by Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Natural Resources Defense Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the German government, Al Gore, and a whole generation of environmentalists.”

RMI is still posting Lovins’s anti-energy screeds, and a December 2022 report from the NGO inspired a commissioner from the Consumer Product Safety Commission to suggest banning gas stoves.

Some of the other anti-gas and anti-nuclear American NGOs that have already banked at least a million bucks from Sequoia include the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, the Environmental Defense Fund, and Public Citizen Foundation.

This is not a full list, and it bears repeating that it covers only a three year period, running forward from 2021—Sequoia’s first year of grants.

To state what should be obvious: these anti-nuclear, anti-gas, American NGOs supported by Sequoia are also opposed to the continued use of coal and petroleum. This places them in opposition to 90 percent of American primary energy use and 86 percent of world energy use. They are anti-energy NGOs.

What Fred Taylor is funding at home and abroad through the Sequoia Climate Foundation is a war against the industrial civilization that made him rich. If his cynical climate colonialism succeeds, then the developing world will remain in the dark. If his developed world agenda prevails, then many wealthy nations will enter into an unprecedented (and very unpleasant) era of post-industrialization. It’s ironically appropriate that this is a movement against CO₂ emissions, as it’s hostile to the prosperity of the planet’s dominant carbon-based life form.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/fred-taylors-world-war-against-energy/