A US foundation associated with the oil company Shell has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to religious right and conservative organizations, many of which deny that climate change is a crisis, tax records reveal.
Fourteen of those groups are on the advisory board of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint proposing radical changes to the federal government, including severely limiting the Environment Protection Agency.
Shell USA Company Foundation sent $544,010 between 2013 and 2022 to organizations that broadly share an agenda of building conservative power, including advocating against LGBTQ+ rights, restricting access to abortions, creating school lesson plans that downplay climate change and drafting a suite of policies aimed at overhauling the federal government.
Donees include the Heartland Institute, a longtime purveyor of climate disinformation, which published a video on YouTube in May stating incorrectly that “the scientific data continue to show there is no climate crisis”. Other groups that have received donations include the American Family Association, which claims that the “climate change agenda is an attack on God’s creation”, as well as the Heritage Foundation, the lead organization behind Project 2025.
“Shell has every reason to want to maintain close relationships with organizations that wield outsize political influence and just happen to reliably support the interests of the fossil fuel industry,” said Adrian Bardon, a professor of philosophy at Wake Forest University who has studied the religious right and climate denialism.
The Shell USA Company Foundation helps employees boost their charitable giving to non-profits. A Shell USA spokesperson wrote via email that the company’s workers make the initial decision to donate “to non-profit (tax exempt) organizations of their choice”.
According to the company’s online donation portal, Shell will match individual donations up to $7,500. The spokesperson confirmed that the foundation “matches employee gifts to such qualified 501(c)(3) nonprofit agencies”, but did not respond to specific inquiries about which organizations, if any, received matching donations from the foundation.
Tax records from 2022 show that the president of the foundation was Gretchen Watkins, the current president of Shell USA. But the foundation itself “does not endorse any organizations” and “giving is a personal decision not directed by the company”, the spokesperson added.
Shell is a multinational oil and gas producer headquartered in London that last year reported adjusted earnings of $28.25bn. Its American subsidiary, Shell USA, has for decades operated Shell USA Company Foundation, which makes grants to American non-profits.
Because the foundation itself is a registered non-profit, it must file public returns each year with the IRS, which contain detailed information about the organizations to which it donates. The vast majority of these non-profits have no explicit political focus. They include YMCAs, youth groups, local churches, schools and mainstream charities such as Oxfam and United Way.
But an analysis by the Guardian and DeSmog found at least 21 groups supported by Shell’s foundation that are aggressively opposed to progressive cultural and economic change, including addressing the crisis of global heating.
“They’re all certainly working in the rightwing policy and propaganda space,” said Peter Montgomery, research director at the progressive non-profit organization People for the American Way. “That includes the anti-regulation corporate right and the culture warriors of the religious right.”
Since 2013, the Shell foundation sent $59,264 to the American Family Association, another Project 2025 adviser and an organization designated as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center due in part to its long history of aggressive anti-gay activism. In a post from 2022, the conservative Christian organization referred to “the unproven hypothesis of man-made, catastrophic climate change”.
Shell’s foundation contributed $23,321 to the Heritage Foundation, which published the Project 2025 document known as Mandate for Leadership. The conservative thinktank has deep ties to Donald Trump and a long history of attacking the scientific consensus on climate change. Last year, it published a commentary on its website stating that “climate change models are poor predictors of warming”.
Shell’s foundation also donated $58,002 to Alliance Defending Freedom, another Project 2025 adviser. It’s a conservative Christian legal activist group that claims credit for helping overturn Roe v Wade, explaining that its “attorneys and staff were proud to be involved from the very beginning”.
Shell’s foundation also reported donations worth $105,748 to Hillsdale College, a private conservative Christian school in Michigan that’s listed as an advisory board member of Project 2025 and that has hosted prominent climate skeptics.
The American Family Association, the Heritage Foundation, Alliance Defending Freedom and Hillsdale College did not respond to requests for comment.
Other donees associated with Project 2025 include the American Center for Law and Justice ($14,321), the Claremont Institute ($1,975), Discovery Institute ($3,300), the Family Research Council ($3,399), First Liberty Institute ($19,100), the Leadership Institute ($7,125), the Media Research Center ($2,528), Students for Life of America ($1,020), the Heartland Institute ($5,000) and the Texas Public Policy Foundation ($8,275).
The Shell USA Foundation also donated to religious right organizations that aren’t directly involved with Project 2025, including $79,874 to Focus on the Family, an anti-abortion group that’s called climate change “an unproven theory”. When reached for comment, Gary Schneeberger, a spokesperson for the organization, wrote: “We consider it a best practice for our ministry and, in fact, a promise to our donors that we never share information about their donations with anyone.”
Another anti-abortion group called Texas Right to Life, which has previously argued that climate change is “arguably, nonexistent”, received $65,103 from the foundation. A spokesperson for the group wrote in an email that “the gifts that came from Shell were matched gifts from its employees”.
Shell’s foundation also sent $8,541 to the Prager University Foundation, which is associated with the rightwing media outlet PragerU. Known for producing conservative videos targeting young people with messages downplaying the climate crisis, its content has been approved for classrooms in several states.
Other religious right donees include Judicial Watch ($32,894), the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention ($37,420), the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty ($2,100) and the Susan B Anthony List ($5,700).
“In the absence of real transparency, one can only speculate on the motives behind these donations,” Bardon said. But the contributions help Shell maintain its place within a broader conservative coalition, he argued. “So if something comes up that bothers me, it’s going to bother you, too, because we’re on the same team,” he said.
This article is co-published with DeSmog