Meet the super PAC working to crush clean energy’s political foes

Last summer, when the Republican-controlled Congress took a wrecking ball to the Inflation Reduction Act, Tom Matzzie was pissed. Though some Republican members of Congress had written letters trying to save wind and solar tax credits, when it came time to vote, they nearly all fell in line behind President Donald Trump. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed with widespread Republican support, canceling a decade-long tax incentive meant to accelerate America’s transition to cheaper, cleaner energy.

Politicians have long lived in fear of certain powerful lobbies — the National Rifle Association, Big Oil, Big Pharma — knowing that if they voted against those interest groups it could cost them their seats. But as the votes came down for the OBBBA, nobody in Congress, Matzzie couldn’t help noticing, seemed scared of antagonizing the clean energy industry.

Matzzie, who founded electricity retailer CleanChoice Energy and previously led campaigns for progressive groups and the Democratic National Committee, resolved to try to strengthen clean energy’s political clout by taking down the industry’s most prominent foes seeking elected office.

This strategy attracted the interest of Chris Larsen, a major clean energy investor who made a fortune in cryptocurrency, and Michael Brune, former head of the Sierra Club. Together, Matzzie, Larsen, and Brune formed the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition — a forgettable name that sounds like those of the other shadowy groups blanketing the airwaves during election season, but that happens to share an acronym with the now-defunct investment tax credit for solar installations. As primary season got underway, the super PAC cobbled together commitments for $20 million from Larsen, Matzzie, and other donors to spend on races this election cycle. Their targets: the far-right House Freedom Caucus members who pushed hardest to undo the IRA.

“Are we strong or weak? Are we someone that people can hurt without consequences?” Matzzie said of the clean energy industry.

Freedom Caucus Vice Chair Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina got a fresh taste of those consequences last week, when he lost the Republican primary race to replace the late Sen. Lindsey Graham. ITC had hit Norman with $1 million in attack ads accusing him of insufficient loyalty to Trump. The president happened to corroborate the message by enthusiastically endorsing Norman’s opponent, Graham’s sister, Darline, who went on to beat Norman by 5 points. 

In his concession speech, Norman lamented that he couldn’t keep up with the outside spending against him.

“All of our money came from South Carolina and from my personal account,” Norman said. ​“My opponents, the money came from outside PACs. It’s a fact; I’m not being critical. The PACs that were against, to me, freedom — as Democrats, they got what they wanted.”

ITC got what it wanted in all five Republican races it intervened in this primary season. The results suggest that even a small amount of strategic spending and targeted messaging can have an outsize impact on the foes of clean energy. If Matzzie and his team keep dealing vengeance to their enemies, they could deliver some of the political firepower needed to create more durable pro-renewable policies.

Using ​“whatever works” to win

ITC kicked off election season by funding attack ads against Rep. Chip Roy in his May primary runoff for Texas attorney general. The ads did not mention Roy’s antipathy to clean energy subsidies. Instead, they blasted Roy for not being loyal enough to Trump. ITC rigorously tests different messages to find what’s most effective, Matzzie explained: ​“We’re going to use whatever works.” Roy lost by 10.4%.

Matzzie, jumping into Republican primary races for the first time, found that each dollar spent on them goes a surprisingly long way. Conservative audiences get their news from a relatively small number of ideologically aligned media spaces, which means ITC can buy ads on Fox News, Truth Social, Rumble, and a few others and have a good shot at reaching a lot of motivated Republican voters, at which point it can cater to those voters’ deeply held beliefs rather than challenging them.

After tackling Roy, ITC put out ads supporting the reelection bid of Iowa Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a pro-renewable Republican running in a primary against an anti-renewable challenger. ​“Stand with Trump, support MAGA, vote Miller-Meeks,” one of the TV spots declared, alongside photos of the candidate posing with Trump. She won her primary on June 2.

Then, ITC launched its first offensive against Ralph Norman. At that point, he was running in the June 9 primary for South Carolina governor and needed to place in the top two to advance to a runoff. The PAC funded a wave of attack ads against him, and he finished in a distant third.

ITC’s clearest flex thus far has been to take on Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles, who faced a primary challenge from former state Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Hatcher. Each campaign had spent nearly $600,000; ITC dropped $2 million on a two-pronged strategy to attack Ogles and elevate Hatcher.

The PAC sought to label Ogles as ​“Lyin’ Andy” by calling attention to instances in which he missed votes in Congress and triggered an FBI investigation over campaign finance irregularities. 

At the same time, since incumbent Ogles had much better name recognition, ITC paid for ads to raise Hatcher’s profile and ran tracking polls to test their efficacy. Over three weeks, the portion of Republican primary voters who had never heard of Hatcher fell from around half to one-quarter, Matzzie said.

Despite an endorsement from Trump and an infusion of more than $700,000 from the Freedom Caucus Fund, Ogles lost the August 6 primary by more than 6 points.

The upset proved sufficiently embarrassing that Trump disavowed Ogles in a subsequent Truth Social post, calling him ​“a person who I remained loyal to even though he had virtually no chance of winning.”

Can the clean energy industry deter future political attacks?

Of course, there’s no way to prove that ITC’s money played a decisive role in these races. The group operates in a noisy political landscape with many variables at play. Ogles, for instance, was reportedly in hot water with voters over Islamophobic and homophobic remarks, per Politico, and needed to reach new voters due to redistricting. Graham had Trump stumping for her in the state, and his PAC funded a barrage of get-out-the-vote texts for her.

Still, each race turned out the way ITC wanted.

As Matzzie sees it, scientifically proving a causal link is beside the point; what matters is that politicians fear the possibility of this happening to them. That narrative gains strength with each candidate who’s knocked out.

It would be hard to find better testimony to the effectiveness of that strategy than the words of the defeated candidates themselves. Norman railed against ITC during his final minutes in the public spotlight as a candidate. Ogles, before he lost, called out the group during a radio interview: ​“They literally are trying to make an example out of me to try to strike fear in other Republicans. Which is why, if they prevail, this will have a chilling effect to the conservatives in Congress.”

Even if politicians think they can survive an assault from a scrappy team of clean energy enthusiasts, the PAC’s interventions increase the cost of running a campaign, pushing candidates to raise more money to counter the spending. ​“If you make enemies, your next election will be more expensive for you,” Matzzie said.

ITC hopes to keep raising money to spend up to $30 million in this cycle, he said. The PAC is now targeting its first Democratic primary, attacking Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee for scapegoating clean energy as the cause of the state’s affordability problems. McKee was trailing his challenger in an Emerson College poll released last week.

The general election season will draw a much broader electorate than the races ITC has participated in so far. Matzzie declined to comment in detail on what the PAC’s general election strategy will be.

From political vengeance to broader support

ITC’s efforts may have delivered a visceral satisfaction to clean energy pros chafing from last year’s defeats, but these actions aren’t likely to yield a more renewable-friendly Congress. Two of the candidates it attacked — Norman and Roy — were running for offices outside of Congress. Hatcher was never a champion of wind and solar. Some Republicans may think twice before loudly attacking the clean energy industry in the future, but that doesn’t mean they’re more likely to sign legislation that’s good for the industry.

Meanwhile, the major clean energy trade groups are not exactly embracing the PAC’s approach.

“We’re in the business of making more friends, not more enemies,” Tim Pawlenty, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said in an email. (Matzzie, for his part, allowed that the trade group has ​“to stay friends with everybody so they can walk into every office.”)

Another clean energy leader, cleantech executive and investor Steve McBee, sees ITC’s work on ​“enforcing accountability” as a valuable effort in a broader campaign to expand clean energy’s political power, even as he himself focuses on coalition building.

In May, McBee launched Amped, an effort to mobilize clean energy professionals and executives to engage more in public discourse, in order to build sustainable bipartisan support for their industry.

Though solar, wind, and batteries have taken over the power sector, representing an estimated 93% of all new power plant capacity getting built this year, the industry doesn’t yet wield the political power to match that success.

“We don’t show up with any swagger,” McBee said. ​“We continue to call ourselves ​‘alternative.’ … We find ourselves a bit outside the cultural zeitgeist, and that’s not a good place to be.”

McBee believes that the IRA was a ​“beautifully designed piece of legislation,” but that not enough work was done to tell voters and their representatives about the jobs and economic opportunities flowing to their districts. He wants to spur energy professionals to flood the political arena with the degree of money and effort that the fossil fuel industry has invested over the decades — but without the ​“lying and distortion.”

“The good news is, as an industry, we have all the facts on our side,” McBee said. ​“We just have to prosecute the case.”

Since starting Amped, McBee said he has received hundreds of inbound messages from people who want to help the industry put up more of a fight, noting the ​“organic unstructured energy that can be harnessed.”

That’s a bigger project than the upcoming midterms: to turn the IRA defeat into a political awakening for the clean energy sector.