Independence Institute
Colorado think tank tied to Exxon, Koch, Leo, Bradley and Scaife.
§ 1 · Background & fossil-fuel ties
The Independence Institute was founded by a former Nixon speechwriter in 1985, and what began as a state-level think tank has since expanded outside of Colorado. It’s has a libertarian bent and consistently promotes “free market energy,” and opposition to renewable mandates and carbon regulation. It argues fossil fuels raise living standards, enable disaster response and food production, and that heavy renewable reliance are high risk and high cost.
The think tank is also awash in corporate funding. It’s taken money from oil companies such as Chevron, Mobil, as well as fossil fuel interests Peabody Energy and Koch Industries, according to Desmog. It’s received money from foundations linked to the Koch family, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.
The group has also received funding from DonorsTrust, a dark money fund that obscures the identities of many original donors. DonorsTrust has been linked to conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo’s 85 Fund. IRS filings show the Independence Institute received more than $1.83 million from National Philanthropic Trust (NPT) between 2018 and 2024, connecting it back to Suncor billionaire investor Paul Singer, who donated nearly half a billion to the NPT in the same period. In addition, one of the Independence Institute’s top funders is the Adolph Coors Foundation, whose wealth is tied to the company behind Coors beer. The Coors family has been instrumental in shaping modern conservative politics.
§ 2 · Record of fronting
From day one the Independence Institute spoke the language of liberty and limited government while quietly cashing checks from the usual suspects: Mobil, Chevron, Arco Coal, Lucas Oil & Gas, and Rocky Mountain Oil and Gas Association. The pitch was free-market gospel—keep government’s hands off energy markets—but the donors were the same large companies whose profits depended on exactly that outcome.
At the turn of the century, the institute spent time attacking Colorado’s renewable electricity standards. For example, [in 2012](For%20example,%20in%202012%20it%20described%20legislation%20expanding%20a%20renewable%20requirement%20as%20a%20) it described legislation expanding a renewable requirement as a “sordid tale” and asserted that renewable energy was “not competitive with traditional fossil fuels.” It also attributed much of Colorado’s electricity-rate growth to the state’s “New Energy Economy,” renewable mandates and policies moving generation away from coal.
In 2010, the Institute attacked Colorado’s Clean Air Clean Jobs Act, which accelerated retirement or conversion of aging coal plants. It alleged that Governor Bill Ritter, the Public Utilities Commission and Xcel Energy had “colluded,” exaggerated federal pollution requirements and used a regulatory “bogeyman” to force coal plants to switch to natural gas.
Over subsequent years it continued producing sympathetic coverage of coal mines and coal-dependent communities, including describing federal pollution policy as a “War on Coal.”
Today the Independence Institute still calls itself a nonpartisan defender of freedom, Yet its energy shop remains a reliable outpost for the same interests that bankrolled it at the start. For four decades the Institute has sold Colorado a version of liberty that just happens to keep the drilling rigs running and the billionaire donors smiling.
§ 3 · The cover story, debunked
“Green energy causes warming?”
Local microclimate effects from turbines are real but tiny, localized, and unrelated to the global radiative forcing from greenhouse gases. Peer-reviewed science attributes the overwhelming majority of recent warming to CO₂ and other GHGs from fossil combustion. Treating a minor local effect as a serious counter to climate policy is apples-to-oranges and does not alter the energy balance of the planet.
The group’s brief in the Suncor Supreme Court case states that the city of Boulder rejected a proposal to stop using fossil fuels despite its “professed fear” of climate change and “critical reliance” on those fuels.
This is essentially a flawed “you participate in society” argument, not a legal or factual rebuttal. Boulder’s lawsuit alleges that Exxon and Suncor knowingly contributed to climate harms, promoted fossil-fuel consumption and misrepresented material information while Boulder incurred local costs. Dependence on products supplied through an entrenched energy system does not eliminate the possibility that their sellers engaged in deception, or that they should bear part of the resulting damages.