Enemies of Energy: 350.org

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.

350.org is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt nonprofit that was founded in 2008 by anti-energy extremist Bill McKibben, then a professor at Middlebury College in Vermont. Today, the NGO claims to be “building a global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis.” True to its word, 350.org’s tax return for the year ending September 2023 reports nearly $7.9 million of $22.8 million in total expenses spent overseas, and another $517,000 distributed to 350.org affiliates in ten states. The 501(c)(3) tax exempt nonprofit reported $19.5 million total revenue for that year, and net assets of $9.7 million. [i]

A November 2025 report in Politico credited 350.org with “spearheading” the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline and generating the “opposition that ultimately led then-President Barack Obama to deny the permits for the pipeline designed to bring heavy oil from Canada to Texas.” ^[ii]

An equal opportunity enemy of all hydrocarbons and nuclear power, 350.org was a cosigner on a joint letter to the U.S. Congress in May 2021 that demanded the enactment of a “federal renewable electricity standard.” The signatories stipulated that only “technologies like solar and wind” should be included, and that the Congress should reject “false solutions,” such as natural gas and nuclear, “which are significant sources of pollution and carry a host of health and safety risks.” [iii]

As of March 2025, the homepage of the 350.org website featured six campaigns “across the globe to end fossil fuels and power up just and accessible renewables.” None of the six appear to be focused on the United States, though a “No Blood for Oil” addendum denounced the Trump administration’s foreign policy objectives in “Venezuela and the Middle East.”[iv]

“REPower Afrika” is the first of the six listed campaigns. The page for this project claims that “17 out of 20 countries most threatened by the climate crisis are in Africa” and that the REPower Afrika effort is “a campaign to speed up the shift away from fossil fuels to distributed, community-owned renewable energy.” [v]

This would be hilariously silly if it were not so tragically awful. According to Our World in Data, nearly half of sub-Saharan Africans—588 million souls as of 2023—live without enough electricity to power basic lighting, a radio, or charge a cell phone for more than four hours per day. “Afrika” doesn’t need a “shift away from fossil fuels” because they have had too little access to modern hydrocarbons in the first place. The idea of setting them up with unreliable, weather restricted wind turbines and solar panels to replace their already unreliable electricity is the epitome of climate colonialism.^[vi]

While it’s tempting to accuse 350.org of trying to keep Africans in energy poverty, they have recently landed in the real thing back here in America. At the end of 2025 the NGO announced a 25 percent drop in income over the previous year, a temporary suspension of programming, and a 30 percent reduction in global staffing that would include retaining only three of 350.org’s domestic employees. ^[vii]

PDF hyperlink to full report

[i] 350 Org. (EIN: 26-1150699). 2023 IRS Form 990 (covering the year through September 2024). Accessed March 13, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/261150699/202501999349301000/full

[ii] Colman, Zack. “Enviro group that helped lead Keystone Pipeline opposition suspends US operations.” Politico. November 13, 2025. Accessed March 13, 2026. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/13/green-group-350-org-suspends-us-operations-00651124

[iii] Letter from Center for Biological Diversity et. al. to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Joe Manchin, and Rep. Frank Pallone. “RE: CONGRESS SHOULD ENACT A FEDERAL RENEWABLE ELECTRICITY STANDARD AND REJECT GAS AND FALSE SOLUTIONS.” May 12, 2021. Accessed March 13, 2026. https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/energy-justice/pdfs/2021-5-12_600-Group-Letter-for-RES.pdf?_gl=1*1c9h3t8*_gcl_au*MTc3NjM3MTM1Mi4xNjg5OTU1MzAz

[iv] 350.org (homepage). Accessed March 13, 2026. https://350.org/?r=US&c=NA

[v] REPower Afrika. 350Africa.org. Accessed March 13, 2026. https://350africa.org/repower-afrika/

[vi] “Number of people with and without electricity access, Sub-Saharan Africa (WB).” Our World in Data. Accessed February 16, 2026. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-people-with-and-without-electricity-access?country=~WB_SSA

[vii] Colman, Zack. “Enviro group that helped lead Keystone Pipeline opposition suspends US operations.” Politico. November 13, 2025. Accessed March 13, 2026. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/13/green-group-350-org-suspends-us-operations-00651124

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/enemies-of-energy-350-org/