Enemies of Energy: Jeff Bezos

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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Donor type: direct grant maker

Forbes magazine claims its iconic “Forbes 400” list is the “definitive ranking of America’s richest people.” Amazon founder Jeff Bezos holds fourth place in the most recent ranking. He is definitely loaded, with an estimated $241 billion net worth that rivals the annual GDP of energy-rich Qatar.[i]

Back in 2020 Bezos threatened to become one of America’s biggest anti-energy donors, pledging to spend $10 billion through 2030 funding what Forbes described as “climate causes.” But it is a challenge to estimate where Bezos belongs on this list of donors to anti-energy NGOs—and indeed, whether he still belongs on it at all. [ii]

A big part of the problem has been transparency. Unlike every other donor on this list, his Bezos Earth Fund was not initially structured as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, but instead a limited liability company. An LLC is not required to publicly disclose its grants in annual IRS reports. A January 2025 Bloomberg report explained the restrictions (and advantages) Bezos has avoided with the LLC structure: [iii]

In exchange for the tax benefits, 501(c)(3) entities are annually required to report details about assets, grants, compensation and more. They’re also required to use 5% of assets on average each year. ^[iv]

Importantly, that report also noted the Bezos fund had just launched a new 501(c)(3) that can disperse tax exempt donations. So, it is possible that future grants from the Bezos Earth Fund may become more transparent. ^[v]

But for now, what we know of the Bezos grants has been self-reported, often through news releases from the fund or by the recipients of the grants.

One of those was described in the previous section of this report:

Many of America’s largest anti-energy NGOs work in nations across the globe. The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) deployed a spy satellite to hover above it all.

EDF’s MethaneSAT, an $88 million project funded by the Bezos Earth Fund and other partners was shot into orbit in March 2024. The ostensible objective was to track methane (i.e.: natural gas) leaks that escape during oil and gas production.^{[vi] [vii]}

In November 2020 the Bezos Earth Fund announced the first $791 million round of grants, more than half of which went to the anti-energy NGOs profiled in the previous section of this report or the pass-through donors to same profiled on this list. [viii]

These are the big anti-energy NGOs that reportedly received Bezos funding in 2020:^[ix]

• Environmental Defense Fund: $100 million
• Natural Resources Defense Council: $100 million
• World Resources Institute: $100 million
• World Wildlife Fund: $100 million
• Union of Concerned Scientists: $15 million
• Rocky Mountain Institute: $10 million

These are the pass-through donors profiled on this list that are known to have received Bezos funding in 2020: ^[x]

• U.S. Energy Foundation: $30 million
• Climateworks Foundation: $50 million

Then a December 2021 news release from the Bezos Earth Fund announced “44 grants totaling $443 million to organizations focused on climate justice, nature conservation and restoration, and tracking critical climate goals.” Recipients included four of the big anti-energy NGOs or pass-through donors that are profiled in this report: [xi]

• Windward Fund: $10 million
• GRID Alternatives: $12 million
• Climateworks: $31.2 million
• World Wildlife Fund: $4 million

From there the trail goes cold. The Bezos Earth Fund has continued to reliably issue news releases to announce grants, but the headline recipients have not been the anti-energy NGOs and pass-through donors to same profiled in this report.

It is possible those big donations announced during the first two years were meant to hold those anti-energy recipients over for many years. And because the Bezos fund has not been required to report grants, it’s also possible that some recipients have received subsequent support that hasn’t been announced prominently (or at all). [xii]

Another possibility is that Bezos has shifted his priorities away from helping the most strident and wealthy anti-energy groups. “Hypocrisy,” as the old saying goes, “is the tribute vice pays to virtue.” Perhaps the Amazon founder has a new agenda that reveals where “the real Bezos” has been all along?

When the Bezos Earth Fund was born, the New York Times strongly implied it was because Bezos was caving in to pressure from his employees: [xiii]

At the time, Mr. Bezos said Earth’s climate was changing faster than predicted by the scientific community five years ago. “Those predictions were bad but what is actually happening is dire,” he said.

Mr. Bezos made that pledge after Amazon’s employees agitated on climate change. For a year, workers pressed Amazon to be more aggressive in its climate goals, staging walkouts and talking publicly about how the company could do better.

With vast data centers that power cloud computing, and a global network for shipping and delivering packages, Amazon’s own impact on the environment is substantial. In September, the company revealed its own carbon footprint for the first time, disclosing it emitted about 44.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2018 — the equivalent of burning almost 600,000 tanker trucks’ worth of gasoline.

“That would put them in the top 150 or 200 emitters in the world,” alongside oil and gas producers and industrial manufacturers, Bruno Sarda, president of CDP North America, a nonprofit organization that encourages carbon disclosures, said in an interview at the time.

Amazon employees cheered the company’s Climate Pledge, but continued to push executives to stop providing cloud computing services to the oil and gas industry. They argued that making fossil fuel exploration and extraction less expensive would make it harder for the global economy to transition toward using more renewable energy. ^[xiv]

Bezos and his rank and file employees have had a complicated history.

More recently, the oceans of red ink escaping the bottom line of his Washington Post led the media firm to cut staffing by 30 percent. Before that, both staffers and readers were enraged that the paper declined to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election—an endorsement that would have gone to Democrat Kamala Harris. Resignations and steep subscription cancellations ensued. [xv]

And whether or not he truly believed the use of hydrocarbons was putting the world in a “dire” situation, as he said back in 2020, Bezos’s personal spending has sent a different message. And it’s not one likely to please the anti-energy staffers at Amazon or the Washington Post.

In early 2026, energy journalist Robert Bryce released Yacht-Zee$, a short and damningly hilarious video profiling the hydrocarbon-hogging superyachts owned by America’s CO₂-phobic billionaires. Even by that rare standard, Bryce concluded Jeff Bezos was in a class alone: [xvi]

Jeff Bezos owns a yacht that’s so big, it has its own yacht. That’s right: Incredible as it sounds, Bezos’ megayacht has a yacht.

[. . .]

Bezos’s yacht is called the Koru. It’s 417-feet long and cost $700 million. And because it’s so comically oversized, Bezos had to buy another yacht to tend to the mother ship. The Abeona is 246-foot-long and cost $100 million. It carries jet skis, a helicopter (of course) and whatever other crap won’t fit on the big boat. [xvii]

The video includes a chart showing that the Bezos fleet consumes as much carbon dioxide as “2,800 average people.” ^[xviii]

But it may be too simple to accuse Bezos of hypocrisy. There is recent evidence that he understands the critical link between energy abundance and prosperity.

In February 2025 Bezos announced a change in focus for the Washington Post opinion page. Bezos publicly explained the change (and the resignation of the opinion page editor) in a post on X/Twitter: [xix]

I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.

We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.

[. . .]

I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.^[xx]

Then in January 2026 the Bezos Earth Fund announced a $3.5 million grant to promote the aggressive buildout of big, emissions-free nuclear power stations in the United States. [xxi]

“The United States has a rare opportunity to turn rising energy demand into an advantage,” said the Bezos Earth Fund CEO in a news release. “Expanding nuclear power can deliver energy abundance — clean, reliable, around-the-clock electricity that supports prosperity and good jobs — while also helping meet climate goals in a small land footprint.”  ^[xxii]

That “small land footprint” statement was a telling flourish. Conspicuously, the release contained no references to “renewables,” “wind,” “solar” and all of the land-devouring, weather-dependent power systems aggressively promoted by the anti-nuclear nonprofits Bezos had funded to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars just five years earlier.

Most of those anti-energy NGOs will continue with their old agendas, using the money they have already received from Bezos to do it. But if future news reveals the Bezos Earth Fund has continued to spend whatever remains of its $10 billion commitment on projects that do not conflict with energy abundance and free market prosperity, then the anti-energy movement may have already lost a major ally.

PDF hyperlink to full report

Endnotes

[i] “Forbes 400: The Definitive Ranking of America’s Richest People 2025.” Forbes. Accessed April 10, 2026. https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/
“GDP (current US$), World Bank. Accessed April 10, 2026. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?most_recent_value_desc=true&year_high_desc=true

“Jeff Bezos.” Forbes. Accessed April 10, 2026. https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/?list=forbes-400

[ii] “Jeff Bezos.” Forbes. Accessed April 10, 2026. https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/?list=forbes-400

[iii] Alexander, Sophie. “ Bezos’ Earth Fund Starts Nonprofit Allowing Tax-Free Donations.” Bloomberg. January 8, 2025. Accessed April 10, 2026. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-08/bezos-earth-fund-starts-nonprofit-allowing-tax-free-donations

[iv] Alexander, Sophie. “ Bezos’ Earth Fund Starts Nonprofit Allowing Tax-Free Donations.” Bloomberg. January 8, 2025. Accessed April 10, 2026. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-08/bezos-earth-fund-starts-nonprofit-allowing-tax-free-donations

[v] Alexander, Sophie. “ Bezos’ Earth Fund Starts Nonprofit Allowing Tax-Free Donations.” Bloomberg. January 8, 2025. Accessed April 10, 2026. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-08/bezos-earth-fund-starts-nonprofit-allowing-tax-free-donations

[vi] Zhong, Raymond. “Methane-Tracking Satellite Is Lost, in a Blow to Climate Efforts.” The New York Times. July 2, 2025. Accessed February 3, 2026. https://web.archive.org/web/20250703035055/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/climate/methane-sat-lost.html

[vii] Simon, Julia. “A new satellite will track climate-warming pollution. Here’s why that’s a big deal.” NPR. March 5, 2024. Accessed February 3, 2026. https://www.npr.org/2024/03/05/1235694992/a-new-satellite-will-track-climate-warming-pollution-heres-why-thats-a-big-deal

[viii] Stiffler, Lisa. “Bezos Earth Fund announces first grants totaling $791M of his $10B pledge to help planet.” GeekWire. November 16, 2020. Accessed April 10, 2026. https://www.geekwire.com/2020/bezos-earth-fund-announces-first-grants-totaling-791m-10b-pledge-help-planet/

[ix] Stiffler, Lisa. “Bezos Earth Fund announces first grants totaling $791M of his $10B pledge to help planet.” GeekWire. November 16, 2020. Accessed April 10, 2026. https://www.geekwire.com/2020/bezos-earth-fund-announces-first-grants-totaling-791m-10b-pledge-help-planet/

[x] Stiffler, Lisa. “Bezos Earth Fund announces first grants totaling $791M of his $10B pledge to help planet.” GeekWire. November 16, 2020. Accessed April 10, 2026. https://www.geekwire.com/2020/bezos-earth-fund-announces-first-grants-totaling-791m-10b-pledge-help-planet/

[xi] “Bezos Earth Fund Announces $443 Million in Grants to Advance Environmental Justice, Conserve and Restore Nature, and Improve Monitoring and Accountability.” Bezos Earth Fund. December 6, 2021. Accessed April 10, 2026. https://www.bezosearthfund.org/news-and-insights/bezos-earth-fund-announces-443-million-in-grants-to-advance-environmental-justice-conserve-and-restore-nature-and-improve-monitoring-and-accountability

[xii] News. Bezos Earth Fund. Accessed April 10, 2026. https://www.bezosearthfund.org/news-and-insights/news

[xiii] Weise, Karen. “Jeff Bezos Commits $10 Billion to Address Climate Change.” February 17, 2020. Accessed April 10, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/technology/jeff-bezos-climate-change-earth-fund.html

[xiv] “Bezos Earth Fund Announces $443 Million in Grants to Advance Environmental Justice, Conserve and Restore Nature, and Improve Monitoring and Accountability.” Bezos Earth Fund. December 6, 2021. Accessed April 10, 2026. https://www.bezosearthfund.org/news-and-insights/bezos-earth-fund-announces-443-million-in-grants-to-advance-environmental-justice-conserve-and-restore-nature-and-improve-monitoring-and-accountability

[xv] Bruell, Alexandra. “Washington Post Losses Topped $100 Million in 2025.” The Wall Street Journal. February 25, 2026. https://www.wsj.com/business/media/washington-post-losses-topped-100-million-in-2025-85076aae

Folkenflik, David. “Bezos orders deep job cuts at ‘Washington Post.” NPR. February 4, 2026. Accessed April 10, 2026. https://www.npr.org/2026/02/04/nx-s1-5699328/washington-post-layoffs-jobs-bezos

Kellman, Laurie. “Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos says opinion pages will defend free market and ‘personal liberties.’” February 26, 2025. Accessed April 13, 2026. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/washington-post-owner-bezos-says-opinion-pages-shift-from-broad-focus-to-will-defend-free-market-and-personal-liberties

[xvi] Bryce, Robert. “Yacht-Zee$ Uncensored.” Robert Bryce Substack. February 13, 2026. Accessed April 10, 2026. https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/yacht-zee-uncensored?r=29azk&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

[xvii] Bryce, Robert. “Yacht-Zee$ Uncensored.” Robert Bryce Substack. February 13, 2026. Accessed April 10, 2026. https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/yacht-zee-uncensored?r=29azk&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

[xviii] Bryce, Robert. “Yacht-Zee$ Uncensored.” Robert Bryce Substack. February 13, 2026. Accessed April 10, 2026. https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/yacht-zee-uncensored?r=29azk&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

[xix] Jeff Bezos X post timestamped 9:31 AM · Feb 26, 2025. X account: @JeffBezos. Accessed April 13, 2026. https://x.com/JeffBezos/status/1894757287052362088

[xx] Jeff Bezos X post timestamped 9:31 AM · Feb 26, 2025. X account: @JeffBezos. Accessed April 13, 2026. https://x.com/JeffBezos/status/1894757287052362088

[xxi] “Nuclear Scaling Initiative secures $3.5M to advance U.S. reactor orderbook.” Bezos Earth Fund. January 29, 2026. Accessed April 13, 2026. https://www.bezosearthfund.org/news-and-insights/nuclear-scaling-initiative-us-reactor-orderbook

[xxii] “Nuclear Scaling Initiative secures $3.5M to advance U.S. reactor orderbook.” Bezos Earth Fund. January 29, 2026. Accessed April 13, 2026. https://www.bezosearthfund.org/news-and-insights/nuclear-scaling-initiative-us-reactor-orderbook