Enemies of Energy: Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Enemies of Energy, a research report created for the Capital Research Center. The page for the full report is here: Enemies of Energy.

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One way to identify anti-energy NGOs pretending to be nature-saving nonprofits is to look at their website for pictures of wind turbines and solar panels polluting what could—and should—be pristine landscapes. Doing this with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) required less than one second of research during February of 2026. Plastered atop the UCS home page was a huge photo of a snow-capped cliff, soaring gloriously above the ocean and covered with… giant turbine towers. (The image has since been replaced but is still available from the Wayback Machine). The UCS motto embedded this slogan on the image: “We use science to make change happen.” Hopefully their idea of “change” will be kept from the similarly soaring peaks in places such as the Rocky Mountains and Yosemite Valley. [i]

“Modern technologies like wind and solar power are safe, abundant, cheap, reliable, and they don’t heat up the Earth,” claim scientists clearly not concerned when their turbines eat up the Earth. [ii]

The scientists also aren’t concerned about the limits of astronomy, meteorology, and math. To accept their “reliable” claim, it’s necessary to believe the Earth has stopped spinning and hiding the sun every day; that cloud cover doesn’t exist; and that the wind shows up exactly where it’s needed, when it’s needed, and goes away when it isn’t needed. The “abundant” claim is impossible and the price irrelevant if the energy isn’t reliable.

So, weather restricted power is definitely “cheap,” but only in quality. That should be a concern for the scientists.

The UCS is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt nonprofit that reported total revenue of $41.9 million for the year ending September 2024, with $50.3 in expenses, and net assets of $60.8 million. Their IRS filing for the year reported that a combined $28.2 million was spent on the “climate and clean energy program” and the “clean transportation program.” That’s more than half of total expenses, so most of what UCS reported it was doing during the year was in one of those two, closely-related areas. The NGO spends less on other objectives, such as food safety and nuclear weapons proliferation. They are primarily an anti-energy NGO.[iii]

This is one of the objectives of the “climate and clean energy program,” according to what the UCS told the IRS: “UCS works to make sure the major fossil fuel companies face legal, financial, reputational, and political consequences for misleading the public about climate science and solutions.” [emphasis added] ^[iv]

Again, the UCS is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity and isn’t legally permitted to engage in a lot of political behavior. Threatening to inflict “political consequences” against a critical American industry doesn’t come off as very charitable.

In addition to their war against hydrocarbons, the UCS has a cleverly nuanced animosity towards nuclear power, which emits no emissions other than water vapor (steam).

For most of its history there was no question that the UCS was opposed to nuclear power. For example, in February 1987 the New York Times reported the UCS was petitioning the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to close down eight nuclear reactors in five states.[v]

And in 1997 researchers from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst released a study examining the economic consequences of shutting down nuclear power stations by profiling the 1992 shutdown of the Yankee Rowe nuclear facility in Massachusetts. “Sophisticated protests by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a powerful advocacy group, against the continued use of the plant were frequent,” wrote the authors. The report did not mention involvement from the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, nor the League of Conservation Voters. The only one of today’s biggest anti-energy NGOs credited with the successful euthanasia of Yankee Rowe was the UCS. [vi]

France spent the 1970s and 1980s building a nuclear power industry that now provides 70 percent of their electricity and turned the French into Europe’s largest electricity exporter.  Americans could have done this as well, but growth of American nuclear power was stunted during this period, in no small measure because of the work of anti-nuclear NGOs. The Union of Concerned Scientists deserves a lot of the blame for today’s lack of emissions-free nuclear power in America.[vii]

That destructive advocacy against America’s largest source of emissions-free energy is hard to find on the UCS website today. Their page explaining nuclear power now concedes that “the low-carbon electricity provided by existing nuclear power plants is increasingly valuable in the fight against climate change,” but goes on to raise the predictable and dubious/hypocritical claims about safety, cost, and waste disposal. The headline of the page says it all: “Nuclear Power: Low-carbon electricity, with serious economic and safety issues.”[viii]

Now the UCS wants us to remember that they have always been just a “nuclear safety watchdog” rather than a major impediment to the technology. But their policy is to be pro-nuclear in principle (saying they support it if it can be made perfect) yet opposed in practice (because nothing is perfect). It’s a distinction without a difference. ^[ix]

A more reliable description of the UCS nuclear energy agenda was revealed in a 2020 comment the group sent to a state public utility commission, purportedly seeking to help Xcel Energy plan its investments in electricity generation: [x]

We can’t avoid the dangerous and unjust impacts of the climate crisis if we swap coal for another polluting fossil fuel, and every dollar Xcel spends on nuclear is one less spent on clean energy. [emphasis added]  ^[xi]

Translation: reliable and carbon-free nuclear energy is bad because it takes money that should be spent on unreliable wind turbines and solar panels.

The evidence all points in the same direction, whether it’s images of mountaintop wind turbines on the UCS home page, the decades of advocacy against reliable and clean nuclear power, or obscure comments made to public utility commissions. The Union of Concerned Scientists is very concerned with promoting the weather dependent power industry, but much less concerned with protecting the planet and empowering the people who live on it.

PDF hyperlink to full report

Endnotes

[i] Home page. Union of Concerned Scientists. Accessed February 20, 2026. https://web.archive.org/web/20260223201912/https://www.ucs.org/

[ii] “Power Ahead.” Union of Concerned Scientists. Accessed February 20, 2026. https://www.ucs.org/take-action/power-ahead

[iii] Union Of Concerned Scientists Inc. 2023 IRS Form 990. (EIN: 04-2535767) Accessed February 23, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/42535767/202512119349301666/full

[iv] Union Of Concerned Scientists Inc. 2023 IRS Form 990. (EIN: 04-2535767) Accessed February 23, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/42535767/202512119349301666/full

[v] “Group Urges Closing of 8 ‘Unstable’ Reactors.” New York Times. February 10, 1987. Accessed February 23, 2026. https://web.archive.org/web/20150524210930/https://www.nytimes.com/1987/02/11/us/group-urges-closing-of-8-unstable-reactors.html

[vi] Mullin, John R.;Kotval, Zenia. “The Closing of the Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Plant: The Impact on a New England Community.” Journal of the American Planning Association; Autumn 1997, Vol. 63 Issue 4. Accessed February 23, 2026. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/ecc8c9b0-50ad-44b9-b8e8-8b1b8ced2dcb/content

[vii] Nuclear Power in France. World Nuclear Association. Updated and accessed February 23, 2026. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france

[viii] “Nuclear Power: Low-carbon electricity, with serious economic and safety issues.” Union of Concerned Scientists. Accessed February 23, 2026. https://www.ucs.org/energy/nuclear-power

[ix] “Nuclear Power: Low-carbon electricity, with serious economic and safety issues.” Union of Concerned Scientists. Accessed February 23, 2026. https://www.ucs.org/energy/nuclear-power

[x] Orr, Isaac. “Clown Show: Union of Concerned Scientists Claims Nuclear Power Plants Are Not Clean Energy.” Center of the American Experiment. December 22, 2020. Accessed February 23, 2026. https://www.americanexperiment.org/clown-show-union-of-concerned-scientists-claims-nuclear-power-plants-are-not-clean-energy/

[xi] Orr, Isaac. “Clown Show: Union of Concerned Scientists Claims Nuclear Power Plants Are Not Clean Energy.” Center of the American Experiment. December 22, 2020. Accessed February 23, 2026. https://www.americanexperiment.org/clown-show-union-of-concerned-scientists-claims-nuclear-power-plants-are-not-clean-energy/

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/enemies-of-energy-union-of-concerned-scientists-ucs/