“Offshore wind energy supporters blitzed the U.S. Department of Energy last week with comments aimed at pushing the agency into giving the $2.6 billion Cape Wind project a loan guarantee,” read the opening line of a news piece in the Cape Cod Times. In addition to highlighting the strength of the Cape Wind campaign, the story noted hypocritical political opposition from two congressmen, Reps. Paul Broun (R-GA) and James Lankford (R-OK). Unsurprisingly, the article revealed that Rep. Broun recently supported an $8 billion loan guarantee for nuclear energy work in his own state.

An AP story that ran on Boston.com similarly reported on the remarkable show of strength in response to our petition that urged the Department of Energy to avoid further delay and proceed with a loan guarantee for Cape Wind.

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the pseudo-environmental group funded by fossil fuel billionaire Bill Koch to delay Cape Wind, published a response to our petition on their website, using misleading statements and half-truths to attempt to undermine our successful grassroots campaign. Their sustained opposition to this landmark clean energy project demonstrates just how important your support continues to be in making Cape Wind a reality.

What’s more, we’ve made it easy to submit a letter: use our online tool to get started!

In a letter sent to DOE on Monday, more than two dozen environmental, clean energy, public health, business and labor stakeholders urged the agency to proceed without delay to consider and grant a loan guarantee for Cape Wind. The letter stated, “Cape Wind will concretely advance the nation’s objectives in addressing the challenge of climate change while promoting energy security and economic development. Following an extremely lengthy and rigorous environmental review, the Cape Wind project should proceed for consideration and grant of a loan guarantee without further delay. Such action will help lay the strongest possible foundation for offshore renewable energy development in the United States.”

Cape Wind Now’s petition to DOE activated Cape Wind supporters across the country who invoked everything from protecting their children’s future to much-needed jobs to national pride in calling on DOE to approve a federal loan guarantee for the project and unleash the potential of offshore wind, one of the country’s most promising, but as yet untapped, sources of clean, renewable energy. Supporters railed against the decade of delay perpetuated by fossil fuel billionaire Bill Koch and his Cape Wind opposition group, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. In yet another delay tactic, the Alliance and a couple of House Republicans recently sought to distract DOE and wrap up the loan guarantee process in red tape by questioning the completed, thoroughly researched and vetted environmental review. “No more delays!” was the common refrain from petitioners, including many Cape residents, who pleaded with DOE to do everything in its power to get the wind turbines built now.

DOE announced in November 2012 that it was considering a federal loan guarantee for the project. The DOE loan guarantee is a key component of Cape Wind’s financing, lowering the cost of the project’s debt and ultimately the cost of Cape Wind to Massachusetts ratepayers. DOE will issue its decision in the coming months.

Courtesy Sotheby’s International

Fossil fuel baron and Cape Wind opponent Bill Koch has expanded his Cape Cod property holdings with the purchase last week of the $19.5 million, 26 acre Mellon compound in Osterville, MA (seen here in this slideshow). Koch’s recent land grab followed the purchase of an adjacent estate for $7 million from the Dupont family in December. According to news reports, he plans to combine the two properties into a single family vacation compound. Koch has owned a home in Osterville since 1984.

Koch’s recent land grabs have secured him over 1,000 feet of private beach, and, ironically, the best view on the Cape of Cape Wind, the nation’s first offshore wind project, which is set to begin construction in 2013.

“This is a chance of several lifetimes,” Koch told the Cape Cod Times about buying both properties and merging them into a place for his children and grandchildren to use.

For the property, and the view, Koch spared no expense: the property was the highest-priced home for sale on the Cape. Located within the exclusive, gated community of Oyster Harbor, the 21-room, 7,000-square-foot home, with eight bedrooms and nine bathrooms, lies on 27 acres, and includes 1,000 feet of private beach facing into Nantucket Sound, where the Cape Wind project has received federal approval to be built.

Jack Cotton of Sotheby’s International, who represented the seller, told the Boston Business Journal that “nature was nurtured and respected. The owner was a true steward of the property.”

We do hope that the entire Koch family, as well as future generations, will keep up this tradition. He can begin by halting his opposition to Cape Wind.

Recently, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound quietly filed its 2011 federal tax return. This relatively routine event might not raise an eyebrow in normal situations. But the Alliance has a track record of, shall we say, carefully managing the information in its tax returns, presumably to avoid scrutiny of its deep financial ties to billionaire Bill Koch. The 2011 return was no exception. It was interesting to see that 60 percent of its revenue came from one donor – hmmmm. We wondered if that donor was concerned about the fact that despite his and a handful of other donors’ handsome contributions in excess of $1.3 million, the Alliance ended the year over a million dollars in debt.

But our real interest was in how the Alliance accounted for its “gift” to the Town of Barnstable, or shall we say, how it didn’t account for it.

You may recall that, back in August, Barnstable town attorney Charlie McLaughlin revealed to the Cape Cod Times that the Alliance had funded the Town of Barnstable’s anti-Cape Wind litigation to the tune of $355,000 “so far” through a special gift fund. Our blog post of October 5 peeled back the layers on how that fund was established and generated some serious concern about whether the Town’s actions, ostensibly on behalf of its residents, should be bought and paid for by a special interest.

We were curious about how the Alliance accounted for that “special gift,” at least $175,000 of which was paid to the Town of Barnstable in 2011, according to an invoice produced by the Town, the Cape Cod Times reported in an article on November 17. The gift was not singled out as a specific line item in the Form 990, but instead included with the Alliance’s own legal expenses, according to Alliance executive director Audra Parker. That didn’t seem right to us, so we asked Donna Turley, a prominent Boston-based attorney who advises non-profits, how it should have been handled.

According to Turley, the Alliance erred either way. In an email, Turley explained that the IRS forms require a direct gift or a grant to be listed separately on the Form 990 and, if in excess of $5,000, explained further on a separate Schedule.  This Schedule requires the charity to list the name of the grantee, the amount of the grant and its purpose. If the money was a legal expense, as Parker explained when asked by the Cape Cod Times, then a 1099 should have been issued to the law firm from the charity and the firm should have been listed as an independent contractor.

Turley continued, “The purpose of these disclosures is for both public transparency and so that the IRS can ensure that the organization is not engaged in prohibited conduct.” She noted that the Alliance could be subject to significant fines if it is found to have violated the law.

The Alliance has come under scrutiny for potential violations of tax law before. In 2010, Greenpeace filed a formal complaint with the IRS asking the agency to investigate wither the Alliance had violated federal tax law by airing a political ad criticizing then-candidate Deval Patrick for his support of Cape Wind during the final days of the governor’s race. The complaint sought to prompt an inquiry into whether the Alliance had violated its 501c3 status by exceeding spending limits on lobbying, and by engaging in activities that benefit the private interests of donors and board members.

The Alliance’s tendency to spin the facts is nothing new. But we doubt that the federal government would agree that a Form 990 is the right place to do it.

He talks about “visual pollution” but apparently has no problem with real pollution or the scars caused by his coal mines and industry oil rigs off the coast. He talks about the cost of wind energy, but what’s the cost of climate change in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Katrina and the BP oil spill? Bill Koch talks about cost, but he never mentions the decades of government subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, where he made his fortune.

America is decades behind Europe and China in developing offshore wind. It’s a tourist attraction in Copenhagen. It’s a job creator in China. It is America’s future. And Cape Wind will be built.

George Bachrach
President
Environmental League
of Massachusetts

Originally published in The Cape Cod Times.

Sara Hunter’s Oct. 18 letter inappropriately criticized the Conservation Law Foundation and other participants in the recently announced Cape Wind Now organization for favoring Cape Wind’s offshore wind project.

Ms. Hunter objects to seeing Cape Wind’s turbines, despite their being barely visible from shore (the closest being 5½ miles from Cape Cod, 9 miles from Martha’s Vineyard and 12 miles from Nantucket). Cape Wind Now is bringing facts to people’s attention and clearly communicating how this project will benefit Cape Cod and Islands residents.

Ms. Hunter has written elsewhere to express concern that much of the beach she and her sisters enjoyed in earlier days has disappeared. Because wind turbines burn no fossil fuels (which create greenhouse gases causing the sea level surrounding Cape Cod to rise), the current erosion and flooding of Cape beaches will be minimized.

I have walked many Cape Cod beaches and taken photos of homes and other structures that will be lost to the rising sea. We must act now to prevent those losses; promptly installing Cape Wind’s turbines will help prevent our beautiful beaches from disappearing.

Jim Liedell

Yarmouthport

Yarmouthport

Credit: ABC News.

Koch’s interview in a November 1 Cape Cod Times article about the influence of politics on the Cape Wind project is the first time in years that he has spoken on the public record about his opposition to Cape Wind. He certainly didn’t do his pet cause any favors. In his comments, Koch brushed the project off as “an irritant” that he opposes primarily because of so-called “visual pollution” – interesting comments from someone who has spent millions trying to stop it. Koch’s remarks go on to reveal a man used to wielding his influence like a weapon to protect his dirty fossil fuel interests. In the article, Koch petulantly complained about a system of overregulation designed to kill coal – his Oxbow Carbon energy conglomerate operates a massive coal mine in Colorado – and promised that he would not make future investments in the United States unless existing protections are weakened.

With Koch throwing millions of dollars around to stop projects and policies that threaten his dirty energy empire, are we to believe that his motivation for bankrolling the Alliance is really to preserve his view? He’s got to be kidding, talking about “visual pollution” as a reason to oppose Cape Wind while sickening scenes of fire-gutted houses, shattered boardwalks, upended cars and boats, and splintered trees imprint themselves on the national psyche. Again.

Koch’s latest unseemly claims about Cape Wind and his transparently self-serving denial of the facts about climate change starkly reveal a dirty energy titan with his head firmly planted in the sand.

Here is just a brief snapshot of the Alliance’s long history of dirty energy ties and deceptions that reveal its true colors.

The Alliance’s history of dirty energy leadership:

• In its early years, the Alliance’s president was (now deceased) Douglas Yearley, former CEO of mining conglomerate Phelps Dodge, known for its significant releases of toxic air pollution and ties to over a dozen Superfund sites. Yearley, who was inducted into the Mining Hall of Fame, also was a member of the Board of Marathon Oil, and reportedly “took a dim view of environmental groups.”

• The Alliance was led at the CEO level for two years (2007-2009) by coal industry insider Glenn Wattley, who vowed that the Alliance “will do whatever it takes to win” against Cape Wind. After leaving the Alliance in 2009, Wattley assumed a new position as executive vice president at WTgreen working on projects including a new coal plant in Dalian, China, notably remarking that “[The Chinese are] not going to stop using coal — that’s like asking people to stop breathing.”

• Starting in 2005 and continuing today, the Alliance is helmed by multi-billionaire dirty energy magnate Bill Koch, whose privately held energy company, Oxbow Carbon, brings him a fortune from the mining and marketing of energy and commodities such as coal, natural gas, petroleum and calcined coke. A few examples of Oxbow’s polluting track record:

• Oxbow mines millions of tons of coal each year from its Elk Creek coal mine in Colorado, an operation that has been found responsible for thousands of violations and subjected to nearly $1 million in fines as of 2010.

• Oxbow, through its Elk Creek Mine Environmental Director Jim Kiger, has railed before Congress against (i) federal environmental policies that it claims are “limiting energy independence,” “killing jobs,” and disfavoring coal; (ii) “nuisance lawsuits and appeals by the environmental community on every federal coal decision;” and (iii) greenhouse gas regulations that are burdensome and directed toward solving “a nonexistent problem.”

• Another Oxbow subsidiary, Gunnison Energy, recently was fined $275,000 for collusion and rigging bids to deprive the government of energy royalties.

Follow the money:  dirty energy dollars prop up the Alliance

Beyond the organization’s direct leadership by dirty energy magnates, the Alliance has been propped up financially by these interests as well – none more so than Bill Koch.

• As of 2006, Koch had pumped $1.5 million into the Alliance’s coffers. The amount of money Koch has put into the Alliance in the past six years as chairman is not known to the public.

• The Alliance’s 2009 tax filings include the extraordinary disclosure that Koch personally made a $100,000 contribution “to pay the [Alliance] President’s salary.”

• Koch also reportedly spent $620,000 through his company Oxbow to lobby against Cape Wind in 2006 and 2007, when an unsuccessful effort was made to derail Cape Wind through a provision quietly inserted in a Coast Guard funding bill.

The Alliance’s history of dirty tricks and lies

As widely reported by the press, the Alliance has a penchant for exaggeration, misrepresentation, and worse. From advertisements that distorted the size of the Cape Wind project to petitions bearing signatures of questionable provenance, demonstrably false claims regarding project costs, and political maneuvering, the Alliance has shown its disregard for the law and undermined its credibility. Beyond its unseemly tactics that have not fared well in the court of public opinion, the Alliance also has been held accountable for at least some of its questionable activities.

• Former Alliance Research Director John Donelan resigned after being caught putting out a fake press release – pretending to be from a Cape business – that a state court judge found to be defamatory with respect to Cape Wind.

• In March 2012, the Alliance and one of its board members were jointly fined $22,500 by the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance for violating campaign financing limits when it ran radio ads targeting then-candidate Governor Patrick over his support for Cape Wind.

Against this backdrop, it is no wonder that the Alliance once earned Toxic Action Center’s “Dirty Dozen Award” – an ignominious recognition typically reserved for the worst polluters – for using untruths and misrepresentations in fighting against clean energy.

Over the past decade, it has become increasingly plain that the Alliance is nothing more than a well-funded front for dirty energy interests, in business for the sole purpose of blocking Cape Wind and the clean energy momentum that it will unleash in the United States. Although the Alliance has lost nearly a dozen lawsuits against Cape Wind, and has seen its base of support shrink dramatically, it continues to press on with two pending cases in federal court and one in state court. It is well past time to call out the Alliance for what it really is.

A Cape Cod shell game, indeed.

Recent disclosures have traced the Town of Barnstable’s funding to the Alliance, whose opposition has become intractable. Image courtesy of peasap @ flickr.

Who’s behind the Town of Barnstable’s opposition to Cape Wind? It’s a question many ask but few are able to answer. A recent statement by a town attorney points to one source: the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, a non-profit organization chaired and funded by coal and oil baron Bill Koch.

According to a statement Barnstable assistant town attorney Charlie McLaughlin made in August to the Cape Cod Times, the Alliance is bankrolling the Town of Barnstable’s ongoing litigation to stop Cape Wind. McLaughlin was the first president of the Alliance, a long-time member of its Board of Directors and a yachting buddy of Koch’s. According to McLaughlin, Barnstable has expended $355,000 of the Alliance’s money to date on lawsuits challenging the Federal Aviation Administration’s decisions that Cape Wind does not present a hazard to air traffic in the area. The town’s most recent lawsuit, challenging the FAA’s 4^th Determination of No Hazard in August, was filed on August 23, 2012.

The Town’s coffers were apparently expanded with a “special gift” from the Alliance in 2010 after town residents complained of their hard-earned tax dollars being expended on litigation to stop Cape Wind. At a town council meeting on May 20, 2010, Cape Wind supporters pleaded with town council members to stop wasting taxpayer dollars to obstruct the state- and federally-approved project that would curb air pollution and bring much-needed jobs to the Cape. Later that evening, right before the meeting was adjourned, the council broke from the agenda to take up a surprise late-filed resolution to establish a special account for the express purpose of accepting gifts for special counsel services and related costs. They put the resolution on the agenda for a vote at the next town council meeting on June 3.

Prior to the June 3 meeting, the town made an appeal to citizens to support its Cape Wind litigation. Town attorney Ruth Weil commented in the Yarmouth Register, “We are hoping that citizens that share the town’s viewpoint on this litigation will be willing to give some funds to that purpose.” During the discussion of the resolution at the June 3 meeting, Councilor Norman moved to amend the resolution with language that would “open up the process” as to what was being donated and how the money in the account was being spent. His motion was denied by a vote of 7-6. In the end, the council, egged on by McLaughlin to avoid “cumbersome” language, accepted an amendment proposed by Councilor Farnham to avoid “tying the manager’s hands,” and voted 12-1 to give total authority to the Town Manager to approve the expenditures from the account.

Just two weeks following the Council’s vote, the Town of Barnstable’s appointed outside counsel, Washington, D.C. based Kaplan, Kirsch and Rockwell, filed a 42-page administrative appeal of the (third) FAA Determination of No Hazard. From the stealth introduction of the resolution to create the account to the speed with which KKR was able to move to file its lengthy appeal, it appears that the Town of Barnstable had a donor waiting in the wings in the form of the Alliance, Koch’s fossil fuel-funded front.

While no accounting of the expenditures from the special account were provided in the Town’s 2013 budget, the budget lists its FAA litigation as a “Major Accomplishment” of the 2011-2012 fiscal year, boasting of the subsequent delay resulting from the Court’s remanding the matter to the FAA “with directions to begin the hazard analysis from scratch.”

In its Administrative section, the 2013 budget makes clear who’s calling the shots with respect to gifts and grants noting that, “All gifts and donations shall be managed and expended according to the wishes and instructions of the donor.”

At the town meeting in May of 2010, Cotuit resident Richard Bartlett spoke passionately about the need to respect the rights of the people of Barnstable on the Cape Wind matter. He asked of the Council, “Why are you such intractable obstructionists?”

Mr. Bartlett, we think we have your answer.

An offshore wind turbine in England. Cape Wind is ready to go — and should be built. Now. Credit: phault @ flickr

11 years. That’s how long we’ve been waiting for the promise of Cape Wind: clean, renewable energy; new, green jobs; reduced air emissions and carbon pollution; energy at a predictable price over the long-term; and energy security. At a time when the evidence of global warming is overwhelming, and the need for jobs critical, unleashing the potential of this home-grown offshore wind project can only be a good thing.

So, why isn’t Cape Wind up and running? Because the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, a pseudo-environmental organization backed and led by fossil fuel magnate Bill Koch, is hell bent on blocking it.

Today we say: enough is enough.

Let’s be clear: this is one of the decisive struggles in the fight for a clean, sustainable energy future, a battle against the fossil fuel industry whose wealth and power have controlled America for far too long.

That’s why CLF is joining with members of the environmental, labor, clean energy, business, scientific and public health communities in support of Cape Wind Now – a campaign to expose Bill Koch’s dirty-energy funded opposition to Cape Wind.

Cape Wind is ready to go! It’s cleared every federal and state review, passed environmental muster, been given the go ahead by the Department of the Interior, has long-term contracts for more than three-quarters of its electricity, and has the support of Governor Patrick and 80 percent of Massachusetts citizens. And yet, a Koch-funded and led group is continuing its tactics of deception and delay.

Koch’s Oxbow Corporation is engaged in some of the dirtiest energy activities known to man, including coal mining and the worldwide distribution of petroleum coke, a highly polluting by-product of the oil refining process. As chairman of the board and a major funder of The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, Bill Koch’s dirty fuel fingerprints are all over the opposition to Cape Wind.

With millions of Koch’s billions still filling its coffers, the Alliance is angling to continue to fight Cape Wind to the death. That’s not just a threat to Cape Wind, but to all renewable energy projects that have the potential to loosen the fossil fuel industry’s grip on our country and move us toward a clean and prosperous energy future. And you can bet that if the roles were reversed – and an opposition group was fighting one of Koch’s oil or gas projects – he would do everything in his power to crush them. Ironic, isn’t it?

Bill Koch and his Alliance must not be allowed to determine the future of Cape Wind, when the project has cleared exhaustive environmental and permitting reviews, when a large majority of Massachusetts citizens support it, and when this pioneering offshore wind project promises jobs at such a critical time for our economy and clean energy at a critical time for our planet.

Those who say that coal is cheap and wind expensive need to check their math. The evidence shows that Cape Wind will save electric customers money over the life of the project as it displaces the most expensive dirty power supplying energy to the electric grid.  And if you consider all the costs we pay for dirty energy – environmental, national security, and public health, to name only a few – offshore wind energy is far less expensive than dirty coal energy.

This is a battle where powerful, entrenched dirty energy interests have pitted themselves against emerging clean energy. It is a fight for the citizens of Massachusetts to have the green energy jobs they want and the home-grown energy they need, when they need it.

To be sure, the fight is more than symbolic. For Massachusetts, Cape Wind is the most important clean energy project. For the nation, it’s a bellwether of what’s to come. Will we choose to create a clean energy future, or to repeat our dirty energy past.

We can’t allow dirty energy interests to thwart our clean energy revolution. Not now – not when we’ve come so far. So please, stand with Cape Wind. Stand with Cape Wind Now.