How U.S. Climate Advocacy Gives China an Edge 

T he Chinese Communist Party is trying to subvert American power by weaponizing our own institutions against us. Nowhere is this dynamic more visible than in climate policy, where influential organizations are unwittingly delivering strategic advantages to our adversary.

A new State Armor report, “ELI and Communist China: How the Environmental Law Institute Threatens American Energy and Advances Chinese Interests,” examines one prominent Washington nonprofit at the center of this effort.

The Environmental Law Institute (ELI) markets itself as a leader in environmental cooperation with a mission to “foster innovative, just, and practical law and policy solutions.” In practice, it consistently bolsters Chinese interests while simultaneously undermining one of the most important sources of U.S. national security: our energy producers and industrial base.

ELI wrongly believes that cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party will yield a mutually beneficial partnership and fewer global emissions. But promises of win-win engagement from Beijing mean that the CCP wins twice. The real consequence has been the degradation of American industry along with strategic victories for the world’s leading emitter: communist China.

The organization has aggressively campaigned to reduce American emissions through climate litigation while simultaneously helping China gain valuable intelligence and a direct line to the America’s judicial system. ELI doesn’t file suits against American energy producers itself; instead, under the guise of neutral education efforts, it influences the judiciary to set conditions for rulings desired by radical environmentalists. Its Climate Judiciary Project has trained more than 2,000 judges on climate science, including controversial theories that link individual emissions sources to specific weather events.

At the same time, ELI’s China Program has collaborated with the China Environmental Protection Foundation (CEPF), the Policy Research Center for Environment and Economy (PRCEE), and the China International Business Dialogue on Environmental Governance (CIBDEG) — all of which operate under the supervision and control of the CCP. Only the most gullible could believe that the exchange of information and influence flowed in only one direction. Certainly, the CCP would use every opportunity to advance their agenda with their guests from ELI. And given the extent of ELI’s cooperation with these CCP-controlled entities, it’s not unfair to question whether the judges ELI has trained and the litigation it incentivizes may have directly advanced the interests of a hostile foreign power.

For ELI, the desired result is a U.S. court system more likely to force significant changes and substantial payouts that advance a climate agenda based on extreme environmental theories. Meanwhile, Chinese energy producers face no comparable obligations or liabilities, which is underscored by the fact the ELI’s mission to change China has been an abject failure.

Despite ELI’s risky outreach to America’s greatest adversary, it has not achieved its climate goals. When ELI began engaging Chinese officials in the 1990s, China emitted about 3.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually. By 2014, when the Obama–Xi climate accord was hailed as a landmark, emissions had nearly tripled. Today, China emits more than 12 billion tons per year — exceeding the combined total of the United States, European Union, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Even in 2020, when emissions fell across most major economies, China’s still rose.

The CCP continues to flout restrictions on its energy supply while at the same time benefitting from ELI’s support for green-energy technologies, where China dominates global markets. And China’s tech solutions are far from benign. In fact, a Washington Post exposé found that Chinese solar technologies embedded across the U.S. contain kill switches that Beijing can use to cause blackouts across the U.S.

ELI also briefs Chinese entities on the American regulatory model, which offers the CCP a blueprint on how to undermine U.S. energy independence. ELI appears utterly indifferent to the potential security risks of its entrenched partnerships with institutions and universities under CCP supervision and control. In fact, ELI’s leadership has actively made the case against treating China as a national security threat. Their willful self-delusion is completely at odds with the assessment of American and allied intelligence agencies.

China intentionally exploits our open society to undermine our strengths and advance its goal of surpassing America. After decades of engagement, there is no evidence that legal cooperation or policy exchange has constrained the trajectory of China’s emissions whatsoever. Yet there is plenty of evidence that legal and institutional pressure on American energy production steadily erodes U.S. national security.

The alarm bells have been ringing on the CCP’s malign designs for years now. It’s past time for ELI and other institutions of American civil society to end the charade of win-win cooperation with China, particularly on matters of strategic import such as energy policy. And federal and state leaders should investigate where institutions are so captured that they continue to turn a blind eye to how their work undermines American national security.