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Outlet profile

Energy and Policy Institute

U.S. left, pro-clean energy

Owned byFounded by Gabe Elsner, who previously worked at Tigercomm (a cleantech PR firm) and the Checks and Balances Project; operated for years as an unincorporated association with no publicly disclosed parent organization; more recently listed in nonprofit databases with EIN 93-2986950, based in El Verano, California
FundingClaims to be funded by environmental and climate foundations; does not disclose specific donors; says it does not accept money from corporations, trade associations, or governments; has been criticized as a 'dark money' group due to lack of financial transparency
On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

The Energy and Policy Institute was founded around 2011–2013 by Gabe Elsner, who had previously worked at Tigercomm, a cleantech marketing and public affairs firm, and at the Checks and Balances Project, a similar pro-clean-energy watchdog group with the same organizational orbit. For years EPI operated as an unincorporated association rather than a registered nonprofit, which drew criticism: its website domain was registered through a privacy-shielding company in Panama, it had only a Post Office box as a California address, and it never disclosed its donors or filed public tax forms. Critics — including the Campaign for Accountability and the Washington Examiner — labeled it a 'dark money' group, noting the irony that it loudly criticized energy industry dark money while practicing similar opacity itself. More recent nonprofit database records list EPI with an EIN (93-2986950), suggesting it eventually formalized its legal status. The organization describes its mission as exposing harms to ratepayers, democracy, and the climate caused by fossil fuel and monopoly utility interests. Its work appears regularly in outlets such as Inside Climate News, and it has produced investigations into utility lobbying funded by ratepayer money and fossil fuel industry campaigns against wind and solar projects. Its editorial output is consistently aligned with clean energy advocacy and critical of fossil fuel industry influence on U.S. policy.

Sources

  1. About – Energy and Policy Institute
  2. What is the Energy and Policy Institute? – Campaign for Accountability
  3. Energy and Policy Institute – InfluenceWatch
  4. How the Energy and Policy Institute Dupes the Media – Washington Examiner
  5. The Left's Favorite Pro-Renewable Energy 'Watchdog' Doesn't Legally Exist – Washington Free Beacon
  6. The Energy Sector Has Spent Hundreds of Millions on Lobbying – Inside Climate News
  7. Energy and Policy Institute – TaxExemptWorld (EIN 93-2986950)

Profile compiled 2026-07-12; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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