What is the European Climate Foundation (ECF)?
Part 1: How did this “net-zero” multinational buy Brussels?
Originally published in French on January 30, 2023
Over the past decade, a mysterious organization controlled by a handful of billionaire philanthropists has taken over European “civil society.” In other words, they have taken over the European Union.
This has been a silent takeover, with no threshold declaration or white knight. A soft takeover, with hundreds of millions of euros in grants, whose target is not a company but the European Union itself. In just over 10 years, an organization unknown to the general public has established itself as the main funder of environmental NGOs in Brussels.
FIREBREAK INTRODUCTION: What follows is a translation of a five-part series looking at how the European Climate Foundation (ECF) has dominated the climate debate in Europe and globally by funding environmental NGOs, using them like an “influence flotilla” to forward the agenda of the climate-driven foundations pulling the strings behind the scenes. Published as one article in 2023, it fits well into The Firebreak’s present ex-post evaluation on how the climate/net zero/ESG/WEF agenda of the last decade had almost succeeded in dismantling Western economic and political structures, how a group of billionaires have been acting as a new power base, using their foundations to influence the media, politicians and NGOs. Florence Autret’s analysis is precise and insightful. For the purpose of considering each of the valuable points of her argument, the English translation has been broken into five chapters:
For those following climate debates, the European Climate Foundation (ECF) has been at the forefront, headed by the former French “sherpa” at COP21, former chair of the board of directors of the French Development Agency and current member of the French government High Council for Climate: Laurence Tubiana. She occasionally speaks in the media to comment on the state of international climate negotiations and relate the political choices of this or that state to their objective of “net zero”.
Her compensation as ECF’s “chief executive officer” exceeded half a million euros in 2021.
This “architect of the Paris Agreement,” as the newspaper Le Monde calls her, has never given an interview about the organization she leads. It’s useless to try to ask her for details on the ECF’s investment strategy in the European NGO ecosystem, on the distribution of its 138 million euros of resources coming from the major foundations that finance it, or on its role in the development of the European Union’s climate law. “I confirm that an interview will not be possible,” a spokesperson declared after several attempts.
“The ECF was designed to influence with money”
In my quest for information, I would therefore have had to be content with a few written answers chiseled by the ECF communicators, if pure luck, on March 3, 2022, had not put me on the path of a member of the ECF’s board of directors.
“Me, if I am a large English or American foundation and I want to invest in the greening of Europe because I think that is where it is happening and that it will influence others (Editor’s note: the rest of the world), I will put my money where it has an impact on the ground”.
The “Me” here is Pascal Lamy.
The former European Commissioner for Trade and Director-General of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy was at the Brussels Press Club that day to talk to a few journalists, including myself, about the papers that the Jacques Delors Institute (of which he is President Emeritus) is devoting to the “CBAM” - the “Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism”.
Lamy knows the ECF well, for the simple reason that he sits on its board of directors alongside other luminaries, including former Environment Commissioner Connie Hedegaard, President of the KR Foundation, and the President of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), Sharan Burrow.
Lamy continued to answer my question:
“And yes! It is designed to influence with money, studies, ideas, actions, events, lobbies that will actually work to make the European Union greener faster. There is no doubt about that. Is this done in transparent conditions? I don't look at that. For me, it's quite transparent because I'm a member of the board... But I'm going to tell Laurence [Editor's note: Tubiana] that I had questions about transparency... Good! Another question...".
Created in 2008 in The Hague (The Netherlands), the Stichting European Climate Foundation (ECF) is responsible for redistributing the sums entrusted to it by around fifteen major European and American names in philanthropy, such as the Hewlett Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Oak Foundation.
In 2021, it declared that it was present at the round table of 713 NGOs in Europe and had distributed 1,177 grants. "Declares", because the ECF does not publish any detailed lists or information of whom it donates to and it is not legally obliged to do so.
€ 138 Million in Donations in 2021
In its activity report (2021), we only learn that the donations are broken down into seven major areas (transport, energy production, etc.) and amount to €30 million. However, it is specified that this sum "does not include, with the exception of employees, the expenses related to platforms hosted by the ECF, which are separate entities with their own governance structure and limited funding".
The tax declaration made available to the public, in accordance with Dutch foundation law, indicates a much higher amount of €138 million in "grants & donations". The hundred million difference could therefore correspond to these "platforms".
While a hundred million is not enough to produce much in the real world, in the area of communication, information and lobbying, it is huge.
Firebreak update: This analysis used the then most recent Dutch declaration form from 2021. A look at the 2023 declaration form shows that contributions to the ECF from foundations have, in those two years, nearly doubled from €138 million to €275 million.
Swarms of Activists
The ECF and its members have established themselves as essential funders for hundreds of NGOs active in various fields: ocean protection (Oceana), transport (Transport & Environment), nature protection in general (WWF), finance (Finance Watch, Positive Money), energy (Agora Energiewende, Forum Energii), etc. Increasingly, the ECF is also “investing” in health, agriculture and food.
Hundreds of activists, probably more than a thousand, live off this windfall. They disseminate hundreds of thousands of tweets each year (presence on social networks is part of the NGO evaluation criteria) and dozens of studies or press releases.
Among the main recipients of ECF subsidies include the European Environment Bureau (EEB), itself a coalition of NGOs, and one of the lobbying giants in Brussels with an annual budget of 5.6 million euros. EEB has no fewer than 32 activists accredited to the European Parliament.
For comparison, CEFIC, which represents the entire European chemical industry, has 39 accredited lobbyists.
Being accredited means being able to freely enter the Parliament, attend all public meetings, walk in the corridors of the offices of MEPs and their assistants, frequent the cafés or the canteen. It is also, at least in theory, a requirement to request an interview with an official, a commissioner or a cabinet member in the European Commission.
Another flagship of this flotilla of foundation-funded NGOs is CAN Europe, the European branch of Climate Action Network. This umbrella group is a major player in “civil society” at the United Nations climate conferences of the parties (COPs). CAN Europe claims to bring together “1,500 NGOs” and represent “47 million citizens”. The ECF is its leading supporter, contributing €2.5 million in 2021 out of a €4.5 million budget.
CAN and EEB have two of the largest lobbying budgets within the EU, alongside major financial and industrial associations and Big Tech.
These groups are popular sources for journalists because of their knowledge of European legislative issues and their ability to produce expert discourse, as shown in this article from the newspaper Le Monde, just one example among others. Entitled “The gas industry’s strategies to save this fossil fuel,” it presents as an “exclusive” the conclusions of the report by the “think tank,” InfluenceMap, a subsidiary of a non-profit organization of the same name registered in the United Kingdom and created in 2015, “on the eve of the Paris Agreement,” by Dylan Tanner, a former founder of a consulting firm.
The report indicates, with company documents to support it, that gas companies fear the effects of climate change policy on their activities and revenues. What a surprise!
According to the information available on its website, InfluenceMap presents a "mix" of funding characteristic of the ecosystem of NGOs and other "charities" supported by philanthropists.
Among the InfluenceMap "funders": ECF, ClimateWorks, the Laudes, Ikea and KR foundations, as well as an organization co-financed by the EU: the European Institute of Innovation and Technology Climate-KIC. The respective contribution of the different funders is not specified, but the joint presence of ECF, Climate Works and several of their own funders places InfluenceMap in the world of activism subsidized by the European Climate Foundation.
In 2015, the coal and lignite lobby, Euracoal, looked into this mysterious organizaton. Its secretary general, Brian Ricketts, said he was intrigued by the arrival on the European scene of about twenty NGOs, all delivering more or less the same message in favor of phasing out coal. His mission at the time was to defend the place of his federation's members in the European "Energy mix". Coal then covered 28% of the needs for electricity production in the EU in general, and more than 40% in Poland and Germany.
"An experiment promoted by an elite"
His research confirms the convergence of the sources of funding of these anti-coal NGOs towards the ECF and, from there, towards a handful of foundations with endowment funds.
Its report published shortly before COP21 under the title “NGOs for Sale – How the US super-rich influence EU climate and energy policy” concludes that there is “a project to dismantle our way of life and replace it with an experiment promoted by an elite that aims to influence the decision-makers of the European Union, taking power from citizens and wealth from all of us”.
At the time, the ECF did not have the reassuring face of Laurence Tubiana. It was run by businessmen. Its first CEO was Jules Kortenhorst, a Dutchman who made a career in the oil group Shell, before managing call center groups, then entering the Dutch Parliament in 2006 with the Christian Democrat party. He interrupted his mandate two years later, following revelations about a seemingly innocuous affair of accumulation between his elected representation allowance and remunerations paid by a company.
The Age of the Super Managers…
In 2011, the Dutchman was replaced at ECF by the German Johannes Meier. Meier had a career at McKinsey, in IT, and then at the Bertelsmann Foundation. A compatriot, engineer Christopher Wolff, supported him in the position of “managing director”. Wolff spent 17 years at McKinsey and headed two companies specializing in renewable energies: Novatec Solar and Solar Millenium. After leaving ECF in 2017, Wolff became “Global Head of Mobility” and a member of the executive committee at the World Economic Forum.
From 2013, Meier and Wolff could count on the support of a “supervisory board” chaired by a star of German politics and business: Caio Koch-Weser. A member of the German liberal party, FDP, this German-Brazilian had made a career at the World Bank before becoming Secretary of State for Finance in Berlin. Between 1999 and 2005, he was a member of the Schröder government that launched the Energiewende, the country's major energy shift, in 2000. When he joined ECF, Koch-Weser had been vice-president of Deutsche Bank for seven years (he would remain so until 2016).
In Germany, the time had come to phase out coal and develop renewable energies, of which the Berlin-based NGO Agora Energiewende was a spearhead. Although it has since diversified its sources of funding and could count in particular on the German Federal Ministry of the Environment (BMU) itself, Agora was "primarily financed in its early days by the ECF and the Mercator Foundation (now a member of the ECF)", according to the Clean EnergieWire website.
Since the launch of the German Energiewende, the anti-coal movement has conquered Europe. Created in 2017, the NGO network “Europe Beyond Coal” now brings together around fifty organizations including CEE Bankwatch, active in Central Europe, WWF, Greenpeace, Agora Energiewende, all supported to varying degrees by the ECF. (Firebreak Editor’s note: The NGO has since changed its name to “Beyond Fossil Fuels”.) In 2021, Agora Energiewende director Patrick Greichen was appointed Secretary of State for Climate and Energy under the current German Federal Minister of Economic Affairs, the environmentalist Robert Habeck.
Between 2015 and 2022, European electricity production from coal was halved, as was the number of power plants. The full phase-out is planned for 2030.
… and the Age of the Priests
In Poland, the European country most dependent on coal, the ECF is said to have had its messages relayed by … the Catholic clergy … to overcome the resistance of the conservative government, which was reluctant to embrace a shift that risked plunging it into the arms of the Russian gas producer, Gazprom.
“When you decide to fund the Polish Church so that priests can speak ill of coal on Sundays, that’s pretty clever, it’s not within everyone’s reach and it works really well,” explains a well-informed source.
We contacted the ECF to verify this information. It denies having paid for anti-coal sermons, but admits: “In Poland, some of the organizations we support are secularized Catholic NGOs involved in raising awareness of environmental issues.”
“Our Polish members are aware that the Catholic Church has spoken out against coal since Laudato si’, even if the Silesian clergy is doing a balancing act,” says the secretary general of the coal lobby. “Clearly, the Church is a strong voice in the climate debate.”
The papal encyclical published in May 2015 has in any case encouraged NGOs and the Church to come closer together and sparked new initiatives such as the creation of the Laudato si’ movement. In the photo above, Laurence Tubiana is seen alongside the economist and nun Allessandra Smerilli and Mir Montserrat, the general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), in 2019, in Katowice.
Seven years after the publication of his report, Euracoal’s Ricketts notes:
“If anything has changed, it is that there is even more money, and still just as little appetite to talk about it.”
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Part 2: “The Net-Zero NGO Flotilla” will be online on February 25, 2025
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