Anti-Wind Power Study Traced to Polluter-Funded Front Group

Woodward & Bernstein’s Watergate source once famously advised, “Follow the money.” ClimateWire (subscription required) has done just that on an anti-wind power study — and traced it back to Big Oil:

A report critical of the Danish wind power industry that was widely distributed to U.S. media in the months leading up to the Copenhagen climate change conference was financed by an American group with close ties to the oil and coal industries, the study’s Danish authors have acknowledged, stirring the wrath of their country’s wind power association.

[Danish conservative think tank] CEPOS has now acknowledged that the report was commissioned by the Houston-based Institute for Energy Research (IER), a group reportedly financed by the fossil fuel industry and which disseminated the report’s findings in the United States under the title “Something Rotten? Obama Says Danes Receive 20% of Their Power Via Wind; New Study Tells the Real Story.”

According to ExxonSecrets.org, the Institute for Energy Research has received at least $307,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998. And Media Matters ties the group to the Koch Foundation, which is funded by the nation’s largest privately held dirty energy company.

Sounds objective to me!

Photo via Flickr’s AMagill