Enemies of Energy: Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC)

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.

***

In any ranking of all the American presidents, Dwight Eisenhower reliably finishes between fifth and tenth. Holding onto a top ten spot is truly a monumental accomplishment: Mt. Rushmore and most of the marble memorials adorning the national capital were already standing before “Ike” took office. And eleven other guys have held the job since he left. The enduring appreciation of Eisenhower is due in no small measure to his big ideas, such as the creation of the interstate highway system. [i]

While the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) was not created to undo Eisenhower’s legacy, that now seems to be the anti-energy NGO’s mission.

“Stopping destructive highways,” is one of the program titles on the SELC website, but a general opposition to roads and cars permeates many other pages. The SELC warns that “the region’s reliance on cars and highways is not sustainable” and complains that “there continues to be a push for highway expansions and building large, destructive new highways as the region remains bound to passenger vehicles producing climate changing emissions . . .” [ii]

Another SELC page promoting ideas for “transforming transportation” includes supposedly “abundant solutions available to overhaul the outdated, auto-centered transportation approach prevalent in much of the South.” These include “halting destructive highway projects that can encourage and lock in decades of increased driving . . .” [iii]

That “auto-centered transportation approach” was a major reason the American economy became history’s greatest industrial dynamo. That economic objective was part of Eisenhower’s thinking when he promoted the interstate highway system.

Relatedly, the SELC repeatedly charges that highways have harmed nonwhite, low-income communities. Using their own buzzwords, they claim that “destructive highways” have inflicted “environmental injustice” on “vulnerable communities” who face “asthma, respiratory illness, cancer, and even premature death.”  ^{[iv] [v]}

Like many claims from anti-energy NGOs, this one is literally true, yet incomplete to the point of being false. All things being equal, tailpipe emissions are obviously not ideal for anyone. But risk is relative, not absolute. Life is full of tradeoffs. It is difficult to locate the SELC’s concern for the health of incomprehensibly wealthy people who expose themselves to “premature death.” And yet many of the very richest Americans live in multi-million-dollar high-rise condos located on noisy, traffic-choked downtown streets in places such as Manhattan and Chicago.

Is the SELC using poor folk as public relations props for an anti-energy agenda?

Consider the SELC’s two major solutions to the alleged highway threat: shipping more taxpayer loot to public transit and electric vehicles (EVs). [vi]

Just 3 percent of Americans commute via public buses and trains. A relatively small number of them are in the wealthy and upper middle classes that can afford to live and work in the expensive real estate at the ends of commuter rail and subway stops. But a lot of public transit users are those who don’t live on that highbrow real estate, can’t afford cars, and use city buses because they must. Among the subsidies already propping up public transit is a 20 percent rake-off from the federal government’s Highway Trust Fund, which collects fuel taxes and automotive user fees from the 97 percent of us who don’t use public transit. [vii]

How the Highway Trust Fund will fund more mass transit if fewer auto owners are paying into it and there are fewer highways is one of many ironic mysteries in the SELC’s policy toolbox.

The EVs are another. The SELC’s policy is to subsidize EVs to replace gasoline-powered cars while simultaneously advocating for fewer highways for the EVs to drive on. Perhaps they think the EVs will fly above the nonexistent highways?

It is also possible that they don’t expect every traditional car buyer to switch to an EV. The subsidies the SELC promotes have been welfare for well-off white people. “Some 57% of EV owners earn more than $100,000 annually, 75% are male, and 87% are white,” energy journalist Robert Bryce told the U.S. Senate during a January 2024 hearing. [viii]

So, the SELC’s future of transportation makes some logical sense after all. We won’t need as many highways if even middle-income Americans are priced out of what’s left of the market for private auto ownership and have to ride the bus.

The SELC is a 501(c)(3) public interest law firm that accomplishes its policy objectives through litigation. The anti-energy NGO reported $58.2 million total revenue to the IRS for the year ending March 2025, and nearly $261 million in net assets. [ix]

One of the SELC’s most generous and influential donors over the last two decades has been an enigmatic North Carolina billionaire named Fred Stanback. His background explains a lot about the SELC’s agenda. A 2018 Knoxville News profile of Stanback reported he was a “known proponent of anti-humanist environmentalism … the belief that protecting the environment hinges on population control.” Consistent with this, Stanback and his family have sent hundreds of millions of dollars to population control advocacy groups, anti-immigration groups, abortion advocacy NGOs and a wide variety of anti-energy NGOs.[x]

A September 2020 Washington Free Beacon report revealed a tight relationship between the humanity-hating Stanback and the SELC: [xi]

That fight is funded in large part by Stanback’s wealth, and the SELC has rarely tried to obscure the relationship. In 2008, it referred to Stanback and his wife as “two of SELC’s most loyal friends” and mentioned both as members of SELC’s President’s Council, a position they were still in as of April 2019. That year, Stanback told the SELC newsletter that he had “counseled” retiring SELC founder Rick Middleton “many times over the years,” adding “SELC is the best environmental organization that I know of.” [xii]

Stanback has been a true believer in all of the alarmist myths and misconceptions described in the first part of this report, and the SELC eagerly parrots these as well. The SELC page that describes their “Climate Change” position begins with this statement: [xiii]

Climate change is the defining environmental challenge of our time—one we cannot solve in our country without solving it in the South. Our region plays an outsized role in contributing to climate change and our communities are already experiencing more intense flooding and storm events, sea level rise, extreme heat, and vanishing mountain forests and wildlife. While the stakes for our environmental future have never been higher, the opportunities have never been greater—and at SELC, we know the path forward to implement solutions to tackle this crisis.^[xiv]

What solutions? The next words on the page are “The clean energy revolution,” and the revolution will mean a lot of the South covered in wind turbines and solar panels. ^[xv]

Five of the six states where the SELC operates have frontage on either the Atlantic or Gulf coasts: Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. As such, the SELC is very supportive of anchoring weather restricted, unreliable offshore wind turbine towers in these waters, despite the extensive noise and disruptions of installing them and their heavy power cables. But like most anti-energy NGOs, the notion of putting a few oil and gas platforms in those same waters meets with strident opposition. “SELC has successfully helped prevent the Southeast coast from being opened to offshore drilling,” they claim. [xvi]

On the other hand, a January 2024 SELC news release boasted that “approved and prospective offshore wind projects have the potential to deliver up to 7,400 megawatts of clean energy to the South, enough to power over 2 million homes.” [xvii]

The fine print is important: all those potential offshore wind turbines will have only a “potential to deliver” the 7,400 megawatts (MW). For comparison, Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear power station has a rated capacity of less than 4,700 MW, but this too is enough to power 2 million homes. The difference is the capacity factor, or the percentage of time an energy system can be expected to deliver at maximum power. According to the Department of Energy, the mere average capacity factor of an American nuclear station is 92 percent—they’re almost always on and cranking at full power—while wind turbines obviously work only when the wind cooperates.  [xviii]

And, as covered in the previous section of this report, a nuclear power station can do its job from just a tiny, single digit percentage fraction of what is needed for wind turbines. [xix]

But in addition to blocking highway construction and filling the ocean with industrial wind turbines, the anti-energy SELC has also been a persistent enemy of America’s largest source of emissions-free, clean electricity. Just since 2022 the SELC has filed legal actions against or otherwise opposed new nuclear power deployments in North Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia.[xx]

Unlike the immensely successful federal highway program, one of President Eisenhower’s other big ideas was his “Atoms for Peace” proposal. Ideally, it would have led to far more American nuclear power deployments than we already have, and thus far more emissions-free electricity flowing, which is what groups such as the SELC claim they desire today. But opposition to nuclear power from the anti-energy groups is a major reason we don’t have those reactors.[xxi]

Whatever their mission is in theory, in practice the energy-opposing SELC has also become America’s anti-Eisenhower NGO.

PDF hyperlink to full report

[i] Fieldstadt, Elisha. “Presidents ranked from worst to best.” CBS News. September 13, 2022. Accessed February 25, 2026. https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/presidents-ranked-worst-best/

“Presidential Historians Survey: 2021.” C-SPAN. Accessed February 25, 2026.

https://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey2021/?page=overall

“US Presidents Study Historical Rankings.” Research Institute at Siena University. Accessed February 25, 2026. https://sri.siena.edu/us-presidents-study-historical-rankings/

[ii] “Stopping destructive highways.” Southern Environmental Law Center. Accessed February 25, 2026. https://www.selc.org/topic/stopping-destructive-highways/

[iii] “Curbing transportation pollution.” Southern Environmental Law Center. Accessed February 25, 2026. https://www.selc.org/topic/curbing-transportation-pollution/

[iv] “Stopping destructive highways.” Southern Environmental Law Center. Accessed February 25, 2026. https://www.selc.org/topic/stopping-destructive-highways/

[v] “Curbing transportation pollution.” Southern Environmental Law Center. Accessed February 25, 2026. https://www.selc.org/topic/curbing-transportation-pollution/

[vi] “Virginia accelerates clean transportation.” Southern Environmental Law Center. March 20, 2021. Accessed February 25, 2026. https://www.selc.org/news/virginia-accelerates-clean-transportation/

[vii] Chernikoff, Sara. “Most Americans are in support of public transit, but 3% use it to commute.” USA Today. May 28, 2024. Accessed February 25, 2026. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/05/28/public-transportation-usage-united-states-after-covid/73802157007/

“Federal Financial Support for Public Transportation.” Congressional Budget Office | United States Congress. March 2022. Accessed February 25, 2026. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57940#:~:text=3-,Sources%20of%20Transit%20Agencies’%20Income,income%20(see%20Table%201).

[viii] Bryce, Robert. “Written Testimony of Robert Bryce to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources United States Senate.” United States Senate. January 11, 2024. Accessed February 25, 2026. https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/2C175FEE-DE32-4C0C-94D9-7B09AE20344D

[ix] Southern Environmental Law Center. (EIN: 52-1436778) ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer. Accessed February 25, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/521436778

[x] Crocker, Brittany. “Headache powder billionaire donates big to small group creating migraines for TVA.” Knoxville News. April 6, 2018. Accessed February 25, 2026. https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/2018/04/06/tva-target-group-funded-headache-powder-billionaire-fred-stanback/461636002/

Braun, Ken. “Anti-Humanist Environmentalism.” Capital Research Center. July 17, 2019. Accessed February 25, 2026. https://capitalresearch.org/article/anti-humanist-environmentalism-part-1/

[xi] Lehman, Charles Fain. “Billionaire Population-Control Advocate Funds Premier Environmental Group.” Washington Free Beacon. September 25, 2020. Accessed February 25, 2026. https://freebeacon.com/politics/billionaire-population-control-advocate-funds-premier-environmental-group/

[xii] Lehman, Charles Fain. “Billionaire Population-Control Advocate Funds Premier Environmental Group.” Washington Free Beacon. September 25, 2020. Accessed February 25, 2026. https://freebeacon.com/politics/billionaire-population-control-advocate-funds-premier-environmental-group/

[xiii] “Climate Change.” Southern Environmental Law Center. Accessed February 25, 2026. https://www.selc.org/our-focus/climate-change/

[xiv] “Climate Change.” Southern Environmental Law Center. Accessed February 25, 2026. https://www.selc.org/our-focus/climate-change/

[xv] “Climate Change.” Southern Environmental Law Center. Accessed February 25, 2026. https://www.selc.org/our-focus/climate-change/

[xvi] “Our impact.” Southern Environmental Law Center. Accessed February 26, 2026. https://www.selc.org/our-impact/

“Harnessing the power of offshore wind off the Southern coast.” Southern Environmental Law Center. Accessed February 26, 2026. https://www.selc.org/topic/harnessing-the-power-of-offshore-wind-off-the-southern-coast/

[xvii] “The potential power of offshore wind.” Southern Environmental Law Center. January 23, 2024. Accessed February 26, 2026. https://www.selc.org/news/powering-the-south-with-offshore-wind/

[xviii] “Nuclear: Plant Vogtle.” Georgia Power. Accessed February 26, 2026. https://www.georgiapower.com/about/energy/plants/plant-vogtle.html

“ALVIN W. VOGTLE Electric Generating Plant.” Southern Nuclear. Accessed February 26, 2026. https://www.southernnuclear.com/content/dam/southern-nuclear/pdfs/our-plants-/plant-vogtle/vogtle-plant_brochure.pdf

“What is Generation Capacity?” U.S. Department of Energy | Office of Nuclear Energy. March 30, 2025. Accessed February 26, 2026. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity

[xix] “3 Reasons Why Nuclear is Clean and Sustainable.” U.S. Department of Energy | Office of Nuclear Energy. March 31, 2021. Accessed February 26, 2026. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/3-reasons-why-nuclear-clean-and-sustainable

[xx] “Court Again Rules that Flawed Decision to Continue Vogtle Project May Not be Challenged Until Project is Finished.” Southern Environmental Law Center. April 21, 2020. Accessed February 26, 2026. https://www.selc.org/press-release/court-again-rules-that-flawed-decision-to-continue-vogtle-project-may-not-be-challenged-until-project-is-finished/

“Georgia’s Plant Vogtle Unit 3 begins ‘commercial operation.’” Southern Environmental Law Center. July 31, 2023. Accessed February 26, 2026. https://www.selc.org/press-release/georgias-plant-vogtle-unit-3-begins-commercial-operation/

“SELC statement on Dominion Integrated Resource Plan.” Sothern Environmental Law Center. May 3, 2023. Accessed February 26, 2026. https://www.selc.org/press-release/selc-statement-on-dominion-integrated-resource-plan/

“Clean energy advocates propose lower-cost, lower-emission carbon plan option.” Southern Environmental Law Center. July 21, 2022. Accessed February 26, 2026. https://www.selc.org/press-release/clean-energy-advocates-propose-lower-cost-lower-emission-carbon-plan-option/

[xxi] “Atoms for Peace.” National Archives | Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum & Boyhood Home. Accessed February 26, 2026. https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents/atoms-peace

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/enemies-of-energy-southern-environmental-law-center-selc/