Summary
Sierra Club is one of the most effective anti-nuclear environmental organizations in the world, with gross revenues in 2015 of $122 million and $75 million in revenues for Sierra Club Foundation in 2016.
War on Nuclear
Sierra Club has long advocated replacing nuclear plants with coal, natural gas, and renewables, from California to Ohio, a strategy it continues to employ today.
"Our campaign stressing the hazards of nuclear power,” the then-Executive Director of the Sierra Club wrote in a confidential 1974 memo to the Board of Directors, “will supply a rationale for increasing regulation... and add to the cost of the industry.”
An anti-nuclear Sierra Club leader later confessed to a historian, “I think playing dirty if you have a noble end is fine.”
Conflicts of Interest
In 2012, the Sierra Club admitted it had taken $26 million from natural gas companies — but only after Club activists took the information public.
Sierra Club has taken an additional $110 million from Michael Bloomberg, a major investor in oil and natural gas.
Sierra Club Foundation board members currently include — or have included in the recent past — the following individuals:
The manager of Barclays’ renewable energy investment banking;
A Director and Assistant General Counsel for solar company SolarCity;
The founder and manager of environmental investment funds Walden Capital Management and Boston Common Asset Management;
A managing Partner at renewable energy company EcoPower;
The founder and CEO of solar company Sun Run;
A partner at renewable energy company Healthy Planet Partners;
The CEO of solar company Solaria.
Sierra Club openly takes money from solar energy companies including Sungevity that benefit from its lobbying for renewables subsidies and the closure of nuclear plants.
