The Breakthrough Institute
An “environmental” institute that accepts the science — then argues Big Oil shouldn’t pay for it.
§ 1 · Background & fossil-fuel ties
Founded in 2007 by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, the Breakthrough Institute describes itself as an environmental research center promoting technological solutions to climate and development challenges. In practice, Breakthrough advocates an energy agenda centered on nuclear power, carbon capture, hydrogen, natural gas, expanded permitting, and other technologies that allow fossil fuel infrastructure and consumption to continue. Its research provides an environmental rationale for policies that preserve fossil fuel interests while opposing efforts to make oil and gas companies pay for decades of climate deception.
Breakthrough's funding includes support from billionaire Charles Koch's philanthropic network. IRS filings show Stand Together Trust awarded the Breakthrough Institute a $250,000 grant in 2024. Breakthrough also lists Stand Together Trust among its institutional funders on its website. Stand Together Trust was founded by Charles Koch, chairman and co-CEO of Koch Industries, one of the nation's largest privately held fossil fuel and petrochemical companies.
Breakthrough also lists Arnold Ventures among its institutional funders, and Arnold Ventures sponsored the Institute's 2025 Abundance conference. John Arnold, co-founder and co-chair of Arnold Ventures, built his fortune as a natural gas trader at Enron. In 2001 — the same year Enron collapsed after one of the largest corporate fraud scandals in American history — Arnold reportedly generated $750 million in profits for the company through energy trading. Enron's bankruptcy destroyed thousands of jobs, wiped out billions of dollars in employee retirement savings, and became a symbol of corporate greed and financial misconduct. After the company's collapse, Arnold founded the energy-focused hedge fund Centaurus Advisors, becoming one of the country's youngest self-made billionaires. Forbes now estimates his net worth at approximately $2.8 billion and reports that he has invested in both solar farms and deepwater oil developments in the Gulf of Mexico.
Breakthrough’s Abundance Conference expands these fossil-fuel connections into a broader Koch-funded policy network. One conference partner, the Property and Environment Research Center, or PERC, promotes “free-market environmentalism” and seeks to replace environmental regulation with property rights, voluntary incentives and market mechanisms. PERC does not disclose its donors, but tax records compiled by SourceWatch identifies at least $590,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation between 2013 and 2019. The same records show additional funding from Koch-linked donor-advised funds DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, which allow the original donors behind grants to remain undisclosed. The Breakthrough Institute also received $340,000 from National Philanthropic Trust, connected to Suncor billionair investor Paul Singer, between 2018 and 2024, according to IRS Form 990 filings.
Breakthrough’s Abundance Conference is also partnered with the Koch and Exxon-funded Pacific Legal Foundation, as documented in this report. These relationships show Breakthrough operating within an interconnected advocacy network financed by fossil-fuel fortunes and organizations that have spent decades fighting environmental regulation. Breakthrough provides that network with something particularly valuable: an organization presented as an environmental research institute that can advance fossil-fuel-friendly policies — and now arguments protecting Exxon and Suncor from climate-deception liability — under the banner of science, technological progress and environmental pragmatism. Further, a former Exxon executive who was with the company for 33 years, Jimmie James, currently sits on Breakthrough’s board
§ 2 · Record of fronting
Unlike many organizations that deny climate change outright, the Breakthrough Institute accepts the science while opposing efforts to hold fossil fuel companies legally accountable for it. The Institute has become one of the leading advocates against what it calls "climate lawfare," arguing that climate lawsuits are an improper attempt to regulate energy policy through the courts instead of legislatures. Breakthrough characterizes these lawsuits as anti-democratic and urges judges to reject them.
In 2026, it filed amicus briefs in Lighthiser v. Trump, a lawsuit brought by youth climate activists seeking to challenge the Trump administration's executive orders expanding fossil fuel development, and Suncor Energy v. Boulder County, a U.S. Supreme Court case in which Colorado communities seek to hold ExxonMobil, Suncor, and other fossil fuel companies accountable for allegedly deceiving the public about the dangers of climate change. In Suncor, Breakthrough sided with the fossil fuel companies, arguing that attribution science cannot reliably link individual companies' emissions to specific climate harms and that state climate lawsuits improperly interfere with national energy policy.
Breakthrough fellow Alex Trembath has gone even further, arguing that attribution science was developed with lawsuits against fossil fuel companies in mind and calling efforts to assign legal responsibility for climate damages to individual producers "methodologically impossible." He argues climate liability lawsuits should be rejected—even as courts are considering evidence that many fossil fuel companies understood the dangers of climate change for decades while publicly downplaying or denying those risks.
Beyond the courtroom, Breakthrough promotes an "all-of-the-above" energy strategy that explicitly includes continued oil and gas production alongside nuclear power, carbon capture, geothermal energy, and other technologies. Rather than supporting a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, the Institute argues they will remain an essential part of the global energy system for decades.
§ 3 · The cover story, debunked
Climate lawsuits are an anti-democratic attempt to regulate energy policy through the courts.
Climate accountability lawsuits do not ask courts to write energy policy—they ask courts to determine whether fossil fuel companies violated existing state consumer protection, fraud, public nuisance, or other laws by allegedly deceiving the public about the climate risks of their products. Courts have long served as the proper venue for resolving claims that companies misled consumers or concealed known harms. If the plaintiffs prevail, the cases could require companies to pay damages or other remedies under existing law—not create new energy policy.
Climate attribution science cannot establish responsibility for climate damages.
Attribution science is a well-established field of climate research used to measure how human-caused climate change influences specific extreme weather events and long-term climate impacts. While scientists cannot attribute an event to a single company, modern attribution methods can estimate how greenhouse gas emissions increased the likelihood or severity of particular disasters. Courts will ultimately determine how much weight to give that evidence, but dismissing attribution science outright ignores decades of peer-reviewed scientific research and its growing use in climate impact assessments.