Amazon founder Jeff Bezos may be stepping back from funding anti-energy advocacy groups after pledging $10 billion in 2020 to address climate change, according to a new report from the Capital Research Center. The report, titled "Enemies of Energy," finds that Bezos's high-profile grants to environmental nonprofits have largely stopped after 2021, with recent funding instead supporting nuclear power expansion and energy abundance. The shift suggests one of America's wealthiest climate donors may be moving away from groups that oppose fossil fuel development.
Between 2020 and 2021, the Bezos Earth Fund announced over $1.2 billion in grants to major environmental organizations and pass-through donors. In November 2020, Bezos distributed $791 million, including $100 million each to the Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, World Resources Institute, and World Wildlife Fund, plus $15 million to the Union of Concerned Scientists and $10 million to the Rocky Mountain Institute. Pass-through donors received significant sums too: $50 million went to ClimateWorks Foundation and $30 million to the U.S. Energy Foundation. A December 2021 announcement added $443 million across 44 grants, including another $31.2 million to ClimateWorks, $12 million to GRID Alternatives, $10 million to the Windward Fund, and $4 million to World Wildlife Fund. After that, the report notes, funding to these prominent anti-energy groups essentially disappeared from public announcements.
The report finds that tracking Bezos's donations has been difficult because the Bezos Earth Fund was structured as a limited liability company rather than a traditional 501(c)(3) nonprofit, meaning it's not required to publicly disclose its grants in annual IRS reports. According to the report, a January 2025 Bloomberg article explained that 501(c)(3) entities must "annually report details about assets, grants, compensation and more" and use 5% of assets on average each year, restrictions Bezos avoided with the LLC structure. The fund only launched a new 501(c)(3) component in January 2025 that can disperse tax-exempt donations, potentially making future grants more transparent. What's known about Bezos grants has come from self-reported news releases from the fund or grant recipients.
The report suggests Bezos may have changed priorities after pressure from multiple directions. When the Earth Fund launched, the New York Times reported that Bezos made the pledge "after Amazon's employees agitated on climate change," with workers staging walkouts and demanding the company stop providing cloud computing services to the oil and gas industry. But Bezos's personal choices told a different story: energy journalist Robert Bryce's 2026 video documented that Bezos owns two yachts—the 417-foot Koru and the 246-foot Abeona—that together consume as much carbon dioxide as "2,800 average people." More recently, Bezos announced the Washington Post opinion pages would focus on "personal liberties and free markets," writing that "freedom is ethical—it minimizes coercion—and practical—it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity." In January 2026, the Bezos Earth Fund granted $3.5 million to promote nuclear power expansion, with the fund's CEO stating that "expanding nuclear power can deliver energy abundance" with a "small land footprint"—conspicuously avoiding any mention of wind or solar energy.
The report concludes that if the Bezos Earth Fund continues spending its remaining commitment on projects that don't conflict with energy abundance and free markets, the anti-energy movement may have already lost a major ally. Most of the environmental nonprofits that received Bezos funding will continue their work using money already distributed, but future support appears uncertain. Whether Bezos was responding to employee pressure in 2020 or has now revealed his true priorities, the report suggests his billions may no longer flow to groups opposing hydrocarbon development.