Wind Energy

Bill Koch: The Dirty Money Behind Cape Wind Opposition

Greenpeace is specifically asking whether the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound broke the law by airing a radio ad in the days before the election critical of Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick’s support for the Cape Wind energy project.

The other three candidates opposed the project. IRS rules prohibit nonprofits like the Alliance from engaging in political campaign activity.

Alliance President Audra Parker tells The Boston Globe the organization has done nothing wrong and Greenpeace has a history of "harassing" them. The IRS did not comment.

Greenpeace released a report back in March that exposed Charles and David Koch, the billionaire oilmen who control Koch Industries, as a chief source of funding for the climate denial machine.

Well, turns out doing everything possible to delay the clean energy revolution actually runs in the family. Today we’ve released a report on Bill Koch, David’s twin brother and the principal funder of opposition to Cape Wind, the project to build the nation’s largest wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts.

Bill Koch made his fortune through his privately-held, carbon-intensive company, Oxbow (or, I should probably say, he founded Oxbow with the fortune he received from suing his brothers in 1983 after they ousted him from the family business). Oxbow Corporation, with $3.7 billion in yearly sales and over 1200 employees, sells 10 million metric tons of petroleum coke and 8 million metric tons of steam coal annually.

After making a killing peddling dirty energy, Bill Koch turns around and uses his immense personal wealth to fund the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the primary group that finds every possible way to undermine and delay Cape Wind. Even worse, he pays lobbyists through his Oxbow corporation to try and quietly kill the wind farm project altogether.

www.scribd.com/doc/34735133/Bill-Koch-The-Dirty-Money-Behind-Cape-Wind-Opposition