The founders of Rewiring America, an environmental dark money group behind the push to regulate and ban natural gas stoves, have a significant financial stake in the green energy push.
Alex Laskey, Saul Griffith, and Ari Matusiak — who co-founded Rewiring America in 2020 — have all pursued various wind, solar, electrification, and energy efficiency projects, some of which have earned them millions of dollars in acquisitions or received significant federal funding . The three co-founders have simultaneously championed policies that benefit these businesses through the nonprofit organization.
“It’s a shocking amount of money they’re bringing in with their plan,” Tom Pyle, the president of the Institute for Energy Research, told Fox News Digital in an interview. “I call it Big Green Inc. It’s literally a business for these guys and they wrap themselves in the mantra of wanting to save the planet. But this is really just very sophisticated proprietary trading.”
“Congress has to be an aggressive watchdog precisely because of organizations like Rewiring America.”
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President Biden speaks at the White House during a celebration of the Inflation Reduction Act on September 13, 2022. Rewiring co-founders Alex Laskey and Ari Matusiak were present at the event. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
A spokesman for Rewiring America dismissed the notion that being involved in for-profit green energy companies posed a conflict of interest for its co-founders and executives.
“There is no conflict between starting a nonprofit — an organization dedicated to reducing family energy bills, improving indoor air quality and reducing emissions — and partnering with for-profit companies that are doing the same. It’s called mission alignment,” the rep told Fox News Digital.
Although Rewiring America is playing an increasingly important role in leading state and federal policies — notably present at a December 14 electrification summit and at an event celebrating the Inflation Reduction Act, both at the White House — the donors are the group shielded from the public. The group doesn’t file federal tax forms because it’s sponsored by the Windward Fund, a nonprofit that’s part of the billion-dollar dark money network managed by Washington, DC-based Arabella Advisors.
The only public contribution to Rewiring America is a $300,000 grant for 2020 from the left-wing nonprofit Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
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Rewiring America’s key goals include getting Americans to widely electrify their homes to fight climate change, and has championed massive-spending climate programs to rival those instituted during the Great Depression and World War II. Activists have long advocated electrification to reduce consumer reliance on natural gas and ensure that power is supplied by renewable sources such as wind and solar across sectors.
The group was at the center of a recent move to limit the use of gas stoves. Rewiring America research associate Talor Gruenwald was listed as lead author of a study published in December linking childhood asthma to gas stoves. The study was sponsored by Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and used to justify tighter restrictions on the device.
After a Biden-appointed member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission said the agency would consider banning gas stoves, the White House said the president did not support such a measure. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“Just to quickly talk about the benefits of electrification, by our count, 42% of all emissions come from decisions made around the kitchen table at home, cooking our food and drying our clothes,” said Laskey, co-founder of Rewiring America , but is also its CEO during the White House electrification event in December.
“The advantages here are enormous,” he continued. “The reality is that when it comes to clean electric machines, we don’t have to cut corners. These machines are better, more powerful, cheaper and more reliable to buy, and they will improve people’s quality of life.”
DEMOCRATIC CITIES ALREADY STEPD FORWARD WITH GAS STOVE CONNECTIONS AFFECTING MILLIONS
While Laskey was introduced at the White House event as the chairman of Rewiring America, he is also involved in several green ventures and has made millions of dollars from the sale of another.
In 2018 he joined the board of Arcadia Power, an online utility company aiming to improve access to green energy. The company, which has received millions of dollars in seed funding, says its mission is to “stop climate change by breaking the fossil fuel monopoly.”
Laskey, right, speaks during the White House electrification summit December 14. (White House screenshot/YouTube/Video)
Laskey also became an investor in green energy training company Greenwork in 2021. And he’s identified as a strategic advisor to Voltus, a company that markets itself as a “leading provider of cash-generating energy products.”
Opower, an energy efficiency company Laskey co-founded in 2007, was sold to Oracle in 2016 for $532 million, the Washington Business Journal reported at the time. Laskey earned about $65.7 million from the sale.
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“We need to aggregate demand. A lot has been done at the national level, but ultimately this is also a local issue as there are local building codes that allow it,” Laskey said at the December event. “We have government housing, we have weathering programs. These, like military housing, must become electrification programs to aggregate demand.”
Meanwhile, Griffith, chief scientist at Rewiring America, is the founder and chief scientist of green energy research firm Otherlab. The company has raised at least $100 million in funding from investors, The Washington Post reported in 2021, and received millions more in federal funding.
For example, an energy efficiency project in which Otherlab was involved received $5.4 million in federal funding, an Otherlab solar project received $4.3 million, and a wind turbine project received an additional $2.9 million.
Rewiring America co-founder Saul Griffith is pictured August 12, 2021. (James Brickwood/The Sydney Morning Herald via Getty Images)
Otherlab’s energy efficiency project Stow Energy has spun off into a company and lists Griffith as the sole board member and “energy guru”. The company is working on the electrification of the residential sector.
Griffith also founded Sunfolding, a solar energy company which received $32 million in additional funding in 2019, and remains on the board. And Makani Power, a wind energy company founded by Griffith in 2006, was bought by Google in 2013 for an undisclosed amount.
Like Laskey, Griffith has championed policies that would seemingly benefit his business ventures through Rewiring America.
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“Rewiring America is a new nonprofit organization I started with clean energy entrepreneur Alex Laskey to mobilize America to address climate change and boost the economy by electrifying everything,” Griffith wrote in a blog post in the year 2020.
“We need to overhaul the federal, state and local rules and regulations that were created for the fossil fuel world and prevent the US from having the cheapest electricity ever,” he added. “Then we need to finance our transition to a zero-carbon energy system with a low-interest ‘climate loan’.”
Solar panels are seen next to an electric power station on March 4, 2022 in Carson, California. (Portal/Lucy Nicholson)
Matusiak, the CEO of Rewiring America, is the co-founder and managing partner of Purpose Venture Group, a climate-focused consulting firm. The firm primarily advises and guides non-profit organizations focused on environmental and climate change issues.
According to its website, the Purpose Venture Group has “made Rewiring America the leading voice and national authority on electrification, with over $20 million in funding committed to date” and provided advisory work to Arcadia Power, the company where Laskey serves on the board of directors.
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The company has also provided advisory services to solar company Posigen and energy efficiency company Dvele, which recently announced it had received $15 million in seed funding. Matusiak serves as an advisor to Dvele.
“Dvele is using its expertise and platform to produce highly efficient, self-sufficient and healthy homes that are at the forefront of society’s energy transition to decentralized power generation and storage capabilities,” the company explains on its website.
“Fully electrifying Dvele homes has energy efficiency benefits, but also contributes to increased home health and safety,” it adds. “Without natural gas burning in a home, there is no risk of carbon monoxide in a Dvele home. In addition, compared to a gas stove, an induction hob helps reduce harmful ultrafine particles and gases.”