When technology entrepreneur Jay Faison decided to use his largess to jump into climate-change policy in 2015, the issue was about as polarizing as any in politics. His $165.6 million gift to create the ClearPath Foundation — which put him at No. 12 on the Philanthropy 50 — was intended to change that. He planned to champion conservative efforts to tackle climate change — an issue most Republicans refused even to acknowledge at the time.
“Four or five years ago, leading Republicans were still using their platform to say that the temperature records were being manipulated by activists and scientists were captured by the agenda of the Obama administration,” says Joseph Majkut, director of climate policy at the think tank the Niskanen Center — one of the groups that has received money from ClearPath.
Before Faison made his gift, there were no voices on the right for conservatives to listen to on climate policy. They were less inclined to adopt positions advanced by environmental groups because they have typically been aligned with Democrats, says Majkut. What’s more, too few climate policies aligned with conservative free-market principles.
ClearPath is developing the policies to fill that void. Some Republican lawmakers have successfully pushed Congress to finance research on clean-energy technologies and to provide additional funding to advance them. And polling shows that government action on climate change is increasingly popular among young Republicans.
That is one of the reasons Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, told the Washington Examiner in October that Republicans risk alienating an entire generation of young voters if the party does not begin advocating for solutions to climate change. And the California Republican said he plans to introduce a series of bills using free-market principles to address the problem.
“We’re finding good ways for conservatives to develop their own authentic way of dealing with this challenge,” says Rich Powell, ClearPath’s executive director.
Clean Energy
ClearPath conducts policy analysis, educates lawmakers, advocates for policies, and makes grants along with its own polling and communications work.
It is particularly focused on increasing research and developing ways to make existing power sources cleaner. It pushes for increased use of nuclear power — something many environmental groups oppose. It also advocates using carbon-capture and storage technology to remove carbon emissions from the smokestacks of utilities and other industries that burn fossil fuels. The captured carbon could be repurposed and sold or buried in the ground.
“ClearPath has really carved out a programmatic identity and is probably one of the leading organizations on clean-energy innovation,” says Majkut of the Niskanen Center.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, a mainstream environmental group, has joined forces with the ClearPath Foundation to push for increased funding for some clean-energy technologies. Those are necessary to effectively curb carbon pollution, says David Doniger, senior strategic director of the climate and clean-energy program at the council. “This kind of cooperation has been effective,” he says.
But he criticizes ClearPath and some other conservative climate groups and lawmakers for stopping there. They generally avoid more sweeping policies to reduce greenhouse gases such as a tax on carbon or a cap on emissions.
The Chronicle’s 20th annual ranking of America’s biggest donors was topped by Michael Bloomberg and followed by the hotel magnate Barron Hilton, then Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO, and his wife, Wendy. The top five on the list each gave more than $1 billion to charity last year.
“We think of it as a building block in a climate strategy,” Doniger says of the research funding for clean energy. “But, having said that, we’re not going to solve the problem of climate change without putting limits that eventually decline to zero and maybe even negative on the amount of carbon that can be emitted.”
Powell says ClearPath is only focused on energy solutions and considers government regulation problematic. “Often the biggest challenge for new clean energy is that the government is standing in the way,” he says.
From Grants to Advocacy
Since it was launched, ClearPath has transformed itself from an organization that primarily makes grants into an advocacy and policy group with a staff of 15.
In its first year, ClearPath spent $800,000 in salaries — and it made more than $8 million in grants. The following year its salaries rose to $1.9 million and the amount it awarded in grants fell to about $4.7 million. In 2017, the most recent year for which public filings are available, salaries jumped again to $2.7 million, and it distributed about $4.8 million.
Little is known about the groups that ClearPath funds since the vast majority of its grants are funneled through the Foundation for the Carolinas and Schwab Charitable. Because the money goes through donor-advised funds, neither organization is required to disclose which grantees received Faison’s money.
Without mentioning groups by name, Powell says that all of the funds go to organizations that support ClearPath’s mission. Those include conservative think tanks that work on nuclear regulatory issues and other groups that study the impact of energy policies on the broader energy sector or that do communications work.
In 2018, Congress passed several bills to fund additional research on clean-energy technologies and provided some subsidies for others. The year 2018 was a “record year for clean-energy innovation policy making here in D.C., and that was led by conservative policy makers,” says Powell. “We’re pretty proud of everything we accomplished.”
But Doniger says those measures should be considered baby steps. The facts of climate change require a bolder response to avoid catastrophic changes in sea level and climate, and the longer that countries wait, the more radical change they will need to adopt to keep temperatures from rising too high.
“We value the role they [ClearPath] are playing in the R and D space, and we will continue to work with them,” Doniger says. “We just aspire for more from the Republican side if we’re going to solve this problem.”
But Powell says ClearPath will continue its focus on advocating for conservative approaches to scrubbing carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel emissions and increased use of nuclear and geothermal energy.
It is urging the U. S. Department of Energy to foster innovation and to work with businesses to demonstrate new technologies. Powell has testified for Republicans at five committee hearings on climate change over the past year or so.
“In every one of them, I have been asked to share our beliefs, which are acknowledging the reality and the severity of climate challenge and then to talk about the solutions that need to be brought to the table,” Powell says. “There’s been a real kind of Renaissance on conservative positioning on climate change.”
