Enemies of Energy: Climate Imperative Foundation

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: pass-through grant maker

The Climate Imperative Foundation is a major pass-through grant maker to the anti-energy NGOs profiled in this report. It also donates to promoters of intermittent, weather-dependent, wind and solar energy systems. The group’s mission statement explains: [i]

Clean energy now costs less than fossil fuels, making it cheaper to save the Earth than to destroy it. Accelerating this transition at the pace the world’s scientists tell us is necessary to ensure a safe climate is the imperative we all face, and the mission Climate Imperative has undertaken.

This goal is now within reach thanks to several major policy decisions: the United States’ Inflation Reduction Act, China’s 1+N climate policies, and the European Union’s Green Deal, to name a few.^[ii]

Since 2021, Climate Imperative has annually received more than $200 million in total revenue, the majority of it in grants from other donors, several of which are profiled on this list. Climate Imperative re-directs those funds as grants to policy and activist groups. In its most recent IRS filing, covering activities in 2024, Climate Imperative reported collecting annual revenue of $271.7 million and disbursing grants totaling $242.9 million, or 89 percent of total revenue. [iii]

Nine of the anti-energy NGOs and two of the other pass-through donors to same profiled in this report received a cumulative total of $65.4 million from Climate Imperative in 2024. This was 26 percent of all grants paid during the year by Climate Imperative: ^[iv]

• Sierra Club Foundation: $23 million
• S. Energy Foundation: $15.2 million
• Natural Resources Defense Council: $7.9 million
• Rocky Mountain Institute: $7.6 million
• Environmental Defense Fund: $3.2 million
• Earthjustice: $2.7 million
• League of Conservation Voters Education Fund: $1.7 million
• Windward Fund: $1.4 million
• Southern Environmental Law Center: $1.2 million
• World Resources Institute: $950,000
• World Wildlife Fund: $450,000

Venture capitalist John Doerr has been listed as chair of the Climate Imperative Foundation board of directors since 2020, the first year that Climate Imperative filed an IRS report. [v]

As of April 2026, according to the most recent Forbes ranking of American billionaires, Doerr’s net worth was $21.9 billion. Along with his wife, Ann Doerr, he founded and funded the Benificus Foundation. Since 2021, Benificus has given cumulative grants of at least $133.8 million to Climate Imperative, with $45.8 million of this coming in 2024, the last year for which an IRS report is publicly available. [vi]

An October 2023 Capital Research Center report profiled the likely winners from the Inflation Reduction Act’s corporate welfare for the weather dependent, intermittent energy sector. The report made this observation of Doerr:[vii]

Some of the red ink from the Fisker fiasco spilled on billionaire venture capitalist John Doerr of the Kleiner Perkins investment firm. After a career of early and very lucrative Silicon Valley investments in names such as Google and Amazon, Doerr announced in 2008 that he’d be focusing a $500 million fund on “clean tech” investments. One of them was Fisker. To say the least, it didn’t become the next Google.

By January 2012, Wired magazine discussed Doerr in a feature titled “Why the Clean Tech Boom Went Bust.” A January 2013 Reuters report was titled “How Cleantech Tarnished Kleiner and VC Star John Doerr.” And Doerr’s misadventures were again featured in an April 2019 Fortune magazine profile: “How the Kleiner Perkins Empire Fell.”

Doerr is a seven-figure donor to the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Benificus Foundation, Doerr’s family foundation, is listed as a “$1 million and above” donor in the RMI’s 2021 annual report. During 2020 Doerr was chairman of the board at the Climate Imperative Foundation when that nonprofit gave $942,000 to RMI. Benificus (i.e., Doerr) subsequently reported a $16.1 million donation to Climate Imperative for 2021, and in Rocky Mountain Institute’s 2022 annual report it showed a “$1 million and above” donation from Climate Imperative.

In May 2022, before passage of the IRA, Doerr advised Silicon Valley to “triple down” on “clean tech” investments.

“Thank you @POTUS for signing the historic #InflationReductionAct into law and making clean energy more affordable for all Americans,” he wrote on Twitter in August 2022. Media reports that month also listed him as one of the top contributors to political committees making media buys to promote the IRA in advance of the November mid-term election.

A clearly patient man, Doerr was undeterred by those earlier setbacks in his climate alarmism investing strategy. Today his so-called clean tech is back in style, and Uncle Sam is even more willing to play sugar daddy. ^[viii]

In an April 2026 public statement Doerr renewed his call for an American commitment to weather-dependent energy. The letter praised China for becoming “the world’s first electrostate” and “upending the old carbon-based world order.” [ix]

As explained in the first section of this report, China is by a large measure the world’s leader in CO₂ emissions, with 32 percent of the annual total, and is expected to open 100 new coal fired-power stations during 2026. As of April 2026, four of the first six “News” items on the Climate Imperative website criticized coal use by the United States. ^{[x] [xi]} [xii]

PDF hyperlink to full report

Endnotes

[i] Mission and Values. Climate Imperative Foundation. Accessed April 20, 2026. https://climateimperative.org/mission-values/

[ii] Mission and Values. Climate Imperative Foundation. Accessed April 20, 2026. https://climateimperative.org/mission-values/

[iii] Climate Imperative Foundation. (EIN: 84-5024713). 2024 IRS Form 990. Accessed April 20, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/845024713/202543179349301634/full

[iv] Climate Imperative Foundation. (EIN: 84-5024713). 2024 IRS Form 990. Accessed April 20, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/845024713/202543179349301634/full

[v] Board of Directors. Climate Imperative Foundation. Accessed April 20, 2026. https://climateimperative.org/directors-advisors/

Climate Imperative Foundation. (EIN: 84-5024713). Propublica Nonprofit Explorer. Accessed April 20, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/845024713

[vi] Benificus Foundation. (EIN: 77-0444504). Propublica Nonprofit Explorer. Accessed April 20, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/770444504

John Doerr. Forbes. Accessed April 20, 2026. https://www.forbes.com/profile/john-doerr/?list=forbes-400

[vii] Braun, Ken. “Climate Alarmists Hoover Up Corporate Welfare.” Capital Research Center. October 4, 2023. Accessed April 20, 2026. https://capitalresearch.org/article/climate-alarmists-hoover-up-corporate-welfare-part-3/

[viii] Braun, Ken. “Climate Alarmists Hoover Up Corporate Welfare.” Capital Research Center. October 4, 2023. Accessed April 20, 2026. https://capitalresearch.org/article/climate-alarmists-hoover-up-corporate-welfare-part-3/

[ix] Doerr, John. “Let’s Build, Friends, Build.” Speed & Scale. April 2026. https://speedandscale.com/letsbuild/

[x] Ritchie, Hannah; Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser. “Per capita, national, historical: how do countries compare on CO2 metrics?” Our World in Data. Accessed January 14, 2026. https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-metrics

[xi] Millard, Rachel. “China pushes coal-fired power projects alongside renewables.” January 15, 2026. Accessed January 15, 2026. Accessed January 15, 2026. https://www.ft.com/content/103a731c-91cc-45bc-8769-ee4cadf3ce40

[xii] “News.” Climate Imperative Foundation. Accessed April 20, 2026. https://climateimperative.org/news/