Department of Energy secretary Jennifer Granholm (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

An environmental nonprofit led by former Chinese Communist Party officials is funding federal climate research in the United States, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis of tax filings and government documents.

The development raises questions about the extent to which China is influencing research and policymaking at the highest levels of the United States government.

The Energy Foundation—which is technically headquartered in San Francisco but operates out of an office in Beijing—sent $278,400 in 2020 to the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to fund green energy research, the nonprofit's tax filings show. One year later, the group sent another $758,000 to the laboratory, pushing its total contributions over the $1 million mark.

Since it began making the contributions, which have not been previously reported, the Energy Foundation has helped conduct laboratory training related to making China's industrial sectors more carbon efficient and financed a series of studies conducted by the lab.

An October 2022 study the laboratory says was funded in part by the Energy Foundation, for example, concluded that a faster transition to green energy would help China meet climate goals, experience economic growth, and achieve substantial job gains. In addition, last month, the Energy Foundation partially funded a guide on the American power grid that encourages policymakers to consider "energy justice" issues such as the health impacts carbon emissions have on minorities.

The Energy Foundation's involvement in United States government research may be a cause for concern, given the group's extensive ties to the Chinese government. And it highlights how China seeks to influence key American institutions—intelligence agencies have repeatedly warned that the adversarial nation engages in information warfare in the United States by, for example, providing financial incentives supporting research painting China in a positive light.

The revelation comes one week after the Free Beacon reported that the Energy Foundation last year sent millions of dollars to American universities and left-wing groups to boost far-left climate initiatives in the United States. The University of California, Berkeley, which helps manage the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was among the Energy Foundation's beneficiaries last year and has received $650,000 from the group since 2020.

Jiang Lin—who serves as the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's presidential chair in China energy policy and as an adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley—previously served as the Energy Foundation's senior vice president of China strategy and analysis, according to a copy of his resume. Between 2018 and 2021, Lin also served as an expert at the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, which develops policy recommendations for the Chinese government.

Lin is listed as the lead contact and corresponding author of the laboratory's October 2022 study analyzing China's climate goals.

The Department of Energy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, and Energy Foundation did not respond to requests for comment.

"The entanglement of this foundation with former Chinese Communist Party government officials, and its active engagement of U.S. academic institutions and other NGOs, is gravely troubling when it comes to our national security, foreign policy and energy policy, and how they may be compromised or undermined," former United States ambassador Joseph Cella, a cofounder of the Michigan-China Economic and Security Review Group, told the Free Beacon last week.

"This seems to be a quasi-subnational incursion and influence operation by the CCP as they use our open system and existing tax law for leverage to gain an advantage economically, politically, or in the realm of societal debates and public opinion," he continued.

As reported by the Free Beacon, the Energy Foundation's staff is composed of a wide range of former Chinese Communist Party officials who have served in high-ranking roles in Chinese government agencies.

Energy Foundation CEO and president Ji Zou, for example, previously served as the deputy director general of China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy, an agency within the Chinese government’s National Development and Reform Commission. Ping He, a senior policy adviser at the group, worked for eight years at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a leading state-run research institution.

Other top Energy Foundation officials include Liu Xin, who previously served as a high-ranking official at the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau; Wei Han, who worked for China’s National Institute of Standardization, a government economic agency; Sha Fu, a former professor at the state-run Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation; and Yunfei Xing, who worked for a state-run conglomerate that constructs power projects in developing nations.

The group's contributions to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, meanwhile, represent the only donations the Energy Foundation has made to a government entity since 2020.

The Energy Foundation was founded in the 1990s in San Francisco. In 2020, it split into two groups, the Energy Foundation China and the United States Energy Foundation. The Energy Foundation China retained the group's original tax identification information, meaning it is still known as the Energy Foundation.

The group's headquarters are located in San Francisco—at the same office space listed as the United States Energy Foundation's headquarters—however, its main operations and grant-making activity are conducted from its Beijing office and overseen by its China-based staff.

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