By The Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — The Kansas attorney general wants U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate a Chinese energy organization he accuses of waging “environmental lawfare.”
In a letter sent to Bondi on Monday, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach urged the Justice Department to open an investigation into The Energy Foundation’s actions in the United States, “including its ties to climate lawfare in the courts,” he said. He linked The Energy Foundation, commonly called Energy Foundation China, to the Chinese Communist Party. He offered no evidence of such connections. “Lawfare” refers to the use of lawsuits or legal challenges to drive political goals.
The letter came after Kobach sounded the alarm on new threats in environmental litigation in June testimony to a U.S. Senate subcommittee.
“Environmental lawfare threatens not only American economic prosperity and energy security,” Kobach said in written testimony. “(In) its latest forms, it also threatens the American constitutional order.”
Energy Foundation China previously operated with the United States Energy Foundation before splitting in 2019 into two separate charitable nonprofits. Energy Foundation China, headquartered in San Francisco with a Beijing office, works to further Chinese industry in climate change, emissions reductions and clean energy transitions, according to its website. The U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce found in 2024 that Energy Foundation China has given money to American organizations to further green energy and climate education, research and projects.
Kobach argued in his testimony that the Chinese Communist Party “plainly has a strategy of driving the United States away from domestic energy sources and increasing U.S. dependence on sources that rely on a Chinese supply of solar panels, electric vehicle batteries, and other technologies.”
He identified two new threats in environmental litigation in the U.S.
The first involves state legislatures and state regulatory bodies that, in recent years, have placed “themselves in the shoes of the federal government adopting draconian environmental standards,” Kobach said. The way to stop them is by suing, Kobach said.
The second is local governments, such as cities and counties, suing energy producers seeking massive compensation for alleged harms to people and the environment, he said. One such case is in Ford County, Kansas, where a group of citizens sued companies in 2024, including ExxonMobil, Chevron and the American Chemistry Council. They argue that the plastic and chemical companies lied for decades about the recyclability of plastic, creating a pollution crisis.
Kobach says Ford County residents claim to represent every county in the United States.
“Setting aside the merits of their environmental claims, which are dubious at best, the plaintiffs in this case are attempting (to) usurp the authority of the 50 states, as states,” he said. “Only a state attorney general can bring a case of this nature, which seeks to remedy an alleged injury to the health, safety, or welfare of the public at large.”
He encouraged Congress to modify the Clean Air Act to add that “no state may penalize, fine, or regulate the emissions of companies engaged in the production of energy or extraction or transmission of fossil fuels.”
In the letter to Bondi, Kobach said the hearing before the subcommittee contained ”dramatic disclosures” about significant financial support to “the environmental lawfare campaign” from the Chinese Communist Party. He also alleged that Energy Foundation China plays a central role in the new threats in U.S. courtrooms and state legislatures.
“It is one thing to watch left-wing law firms and non-profits use laws designed to impose extraterritorial burdens to advance their radical policy interests in the courtrooms of America to the detriment of our consumers and our economy,” he wrote, “but when such legal actions are tied to China, it likely reveals a foreign adversarial attack on American energy independence.”
