By Brett Rowland
The Center Square

Changes to the Environmental Protection Agency’s strict regulations on the automobile industry could cost nonprofit groups that reported a 267% funding bump in the years since the federal agency’s 2009 Endangerment Finding, a rule that provided a legal basis for the agency to regulate vehicle emissions and the energy industry through the Clean Air Act.

Democracy Restored, a nonprofit dedicated to showing how government works, reviewed the tax returns of more than 75 of the top nonprofit organizations focused on climate change. Funding for those 75 groups has increased significantly since 2009 with their bottom lines moving from about $3 billion to $8 billion, since the most recently available tax returns were made public, said Houston Keene, director of Democracy Restored.

Government grants to those same 75 organizations increased from $350 million in 2009 to nearly $1.4 billion in 2023, the most recent year for which records were available.

“The endangerment finding seems to have given a very big boost to these groups,” Keene told The Center Square.

In July, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed to rescind an Obama-era environmental finding, or endangerment finding, impacting the automobile industry. Trump’s EPA boss, Lee Zeldin, says the endangerment finding cost the industry $1 trillion in regulations. Trump’s EPA blames the 2009 Endangerment Finding for the Biden administration’s electric vehicle mandate, which aimed to reduce the production of gas-powered vehicles.

Zeldin’s EPA says that if the proposal is finalized, it will lead to the repeal of all “resulting greenhouse gas emissions regulations for motor vehicles and engines,” resulting in consumer choice and affordability. The agency says that it will save over $54 billion a year.

In support of the proposal, the EPA cited new scientific data it says challenges “the assumptions behind the 2009 Endangerment Finding.” The EPA chief contends the Obama and Biden administrations used “warped science” to cram through new emission standards.

Other groups disagree. Former vice president and environmental activist Al Gore says the move ignores reality.

Keene said the groups are pushing policies out of touch with Americans.

“They’re pushing policies that the majority of Americans wouldn’t want to live under or even agree with at this point,” he told The Center Square.

Keene said that such spending needs to be carefully examined going forward.

“What needs to happen next is we need to see these contracts and the spending in the grants. We need to have a very, very fine-tuned microscope,” he told The Center Square. “We need to know, you know who these groups are, where this money is going. What comes next is oversight – proper oversight.”