Bill Gates Has Profitable Relationship with Energy Secretary Granholm

The ethically challenged secretary and the billionaire climate activist/nuclear power company owner collaborated often. It cost taxpayers a lot.

One of the first people Biden-Harris Energy Secretary Jennifer Grandholm met with after her February 25, 2021, Senate confirmation was billionaire Microsoft founder and environmental activist Bill Gates. They met again a month later. Talking to a billionaire must have been a bit overwhelming for the new Secretary. Maybe that’s why so many ethical obligations slipped her mind.

Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) has learned from Granholm’s calendar, obtained via FOIA request, that the two remained chummy. On June 2, 2021, Granholm attended virtually an announcement of a “Terra Power announcement of a Natrium Demonstration Reactor” project in Wyoming. Terra is a nuclear power company founded by Gates. DOE authorized “up to $2 billion” in the 50/50 cost-share program. 

 But Gates wasn’t done with Granholm yet. They met on August 2 and August 11, 2021. And on August 12 Gates and Granholm announced the DOE would spend $1.5 billion with Breakthrough Energy – one of Gates’s companies – on “clean energy technology demonstrations.” Because, in Gates’s words, “Avoiding a climate disaster will require a new industrial revolution.” 

And putting a lot more taxpayer money in Bill Gates’s pockets, apparently.

“Recent news is loaded with stories decrying the influence of billionaires,” said PPT Director Michael Chamberlain. “Yet there was nary a peep of protest when high-ranking Biden administration officials frequently hobnobbed with billionaires, even when those connections turned out to be very lucrative. What a difference a new administration makes.”

###