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Monday, January 17, 2011

Bill Koch: The Dirty Money Behind Cape Wind Opposition

Bill Koch: The Dirty Money Behind Cape Wind Opposition

by Greenpeace USA

Our report, "Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine," exposed Charles and David Koch, the billionaire oilmen who control Koch Industries, as a chief source of funding for the climate denial machine. As it turns out, doing everything possible to delay the clean energy revolution is something of a family business. We've released a dossier on Bill Koch, David's twin brother and the principal funder of opposition to Cape Wind, the project to build the nation's largest wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts.
A Greenpeace boat in front of the Offshore Windpark Egmond aan Zee off the Dutch coast. America is falling behind in the race to develop renewable energy technologies and utilize renewable resources. Cape Wind would be the first major offshore wind facility in the US.
Bill Koch made his fortune through his privately-held, carbon-intensive company, Oxbow. (Koch founded Oxbow with the fortune he received from suing his brothers in 1983 after they ousted him from the family business.) Oxbow Corporation, with $3.7 billion in yearly sales and over 1200 employees, sells 10 million metric tons of petroleum coke and 8 million metric tons of steam coal annually. 

After making a killing peddling dirty energy, Bill Koch turns around and uses his immense personal wealth to fund the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the primary group that finds every possible way to delay Cape Wind from moving forward. Even worse, he pays lobbyists through his Oxbow corporation to try and quietly kill the wind farm project altogether.

We compiled the full story behind Bill Koch into a brief dossier which you can read below or download by right-clicking here: Bill Koch: The Dirty Money Behind Cape Wind Opposition.

1 comment:

WitsEnd said...

Thanks Tenney! I'm going to start compiling a special Koch post for the day of the demonstration, and this is a timely new addition!

http://www.alternet.org/news/149546