Mariam Zuhaib/AP Photo
JC Sandberg, chief advocacy officer with American Clean Power, speaks during a House Committee on Natural Resources hearing on America’s energy and mineral potential, February 8, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington.
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Members of the American Clean Power Association (ACP) flooded into Washington last week for an in-person lobbying push for so-called permitting reform, which they themed “#ReadytoBuild.” ACP is commonly described by news media as “the clean energy industry’s top trade association” or “the leading renewables industry group.” So why did the group throw its support behind Republican-led H.R. 1, the bill that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called “a wish list for Big Oil,” along with Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) “dirty deal,” knowing it would advance fossil fuel projects, including the Mountain Valley Pipeline?
Descriptions of ACP as a clean-energy industry group are misleading at best. ACP does indeed represent many clean-energy companies, but is also a conglomeration of executives and corporations that are tied to, and benefit from, the fossil fuel industry’s continued reign—including some executives from some of the biggest oil companies in the world. As Inside Climate News reported last week, ACP spokesman Jason Ryan admitted, “We represent all sectors of the clean energy industry. Some of our members have legacy oil and gas assets, and others are purely renewable companies. We represent all of them, and don’t take favor to anyone.” As ACP continues to engage in energy debate, clarity around their real influences and agenda is vitally important.
ACP did not respond to a request for comment for this piece.
Oil and gas and utility companies have succeeded in stacking ACP’s board of directors with their own representatives, and now seem to be successful in getting the group to push a fossil fuel agenda. As of April 2023, the board included a Shell vice president and a BP senior vice president, as well as executives from utility companies including Southern Power, Dominion Energy, Xcel Energy, NextEra Energy, and American Electric Power. Eight more board members are sourced from “clean” energy companies that own, invest in, or otherwise support methane gas, hydrogen, and/or carbon capture infrastructure. There’s also a board member from JPMorgan Chase, the top global financier of new fossil fuel projects, and Amazon Energy, which works with a number of oil and gas companies.
ACP has been led for the past three years by two individuals who are no strangers to advancing the fossil fuel agenda under the guise of clean- and renewable-energy expansion. Heather Zichal was CEO between 2020 and 2022, when she oversaw lobbying for permitting reform that would benefit the oil and gas industry, and ran a PAC that contributed to dozens of fossil fuel–tied candidates. Zichal, like ACP, is frequently described as a clean-energy leader. But as a climate adviser to President Obama, she led the administration’s expansion of coal, oil, and gas and led an interagency group tasked with clearing a regulatory path for Shell to drill offshore. After her time under Obama, she joined the board of gas company Cheniere and earned $1.1 million over four years for her service. Cheniere received its first liquefied natural gas export permit while Zichal was at the White House.
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Zichal is now global head of sustainability at JPMorgan, which has invested $434.15 billion in the fossil fuel industry over the past seven years.
Jason Grumet succeeded Zichal as CEO as of December 2022. Grumet came directly from a 15-year stint at the Bipartisan Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2007. That group asserted that oil and gas will play a “strong role in the energy transition” and prioritized technological innovations including carbon dioxide removal, which has never worked at scale. Prior to his time advocating for false solutions and the extension of oil and gas, Grumet was executive director of the National Commission on Energy Policy, which was purportedly created to pull the federal climate debate “toward the center.” Contrary to its branding, the commission’s work is known to have heavily influenced the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which massively subsidized the oil and gas industry and completely sidestepped issues of climate change. Now, Grumet’s leadership at ACP appears to be only a continuation of the planet-warming work he’s done for the past two decades.
Based on ACP’s leadership, it should be easy to guess some of the industry association’s members. That list is not publicly available, but simple inference is useful here: The Energy Storage Association, which no longer exists as it has been folded into ACP, does keep a public record of its membership. Shell, Ameresco, Duke Energy, Exelon, Amazon, BlackRock, and Lockheed Martin top the list. Sponsors of ACP’s 2023 annual conference featured Shell and TotalEnergies.
Outside of its own board, members, executives, and conference sponsors, ACP seeks to influence politics through its “CleanPower PAC,” which is quite a deceptive name that has likely led well-meaning small-dollar donors to contribute thinking they’re advancing clean energy, not the Big Oil–backed bills ACP has thrown its weight behind. ACP’s CleanPower PAC not only received contributions from fossil fuel interests including BP, Dominion Energy, and NextEra executives, but its disbursements have been quite concerning. During the 2021-2022 election cycle, CleanPower PAC gave funds to 36 Republican candidates or PACs, and 33 Democratic candidates or PACs. Their contributions to Democrats included problematic fossil fuel allies including Sens. Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizonan who went independent this year.
ACP’s support for Big Oil’s idea of permitting reform finds them in poor company. In March of this year, they joined the American Petroleum Institute, Chamber of Commerce, American Gas Association, Independent Petroleum Association of America, and Interstate Natural Gas Association of America in urging the passage of permitting reform legislation. Three weeks later, Grumet spoke on a panel at an event alongside the president of the Chamber of Commerce Global Energy Institute, which explicitly supports the extended use of coal, oil, and gas.
While permitting reforms for electric grid transmission has proponents on the left, the version that ACP endorses would also serve as a green light for the fossil fuel industry to more easily advance projects without environmental review or community input, leaving vulnerable frontline communities to grapple with being sacrificed for what pundits say could possibly, maybe, if the calculus works out, be the greater good. The conversation also sidesteps the central issue of severe lack of capacity throughout the federal government.
Americans are familiar with political groups distorting the truth and misusing labels to push a special-interest agenda, but the case of American Clean Power is especially egregious. ACP is actively aligning itself with the fossil fuel industry while pointing readers to the word “clean” in its name. The public, and the well-intentioned individuals actually working to advance clean energy and environmental justice, deserve to know the truth about the people devising these tactics.
