RMI Led The Push To Ban Gas Stoves. Why Is It Getting Millions In Federal Funding?

Rocky Mountain Institute wants to ban gas stoves. And yet, it’s getting funding from NSF, DOE, State, Transportation, GSA, & USTDA. WTF?

This image appeared on the cover of the Rocky Mountain Institute’s 2022 annual report.

Since 2020, the Rocky Mountain Institute has been hyping bogus claims about the alleged danger of natural gas stoves. That year, the Colorado-based group claimed that gas stoves “release toxic pollutants that can damage human health, but governments have done little to educate the public or accelerate the transition to all-electric cooking.”

In early 2023, RMI published a report that claimed that 12.7% of childhood asthma cases in the US “can be linked to gas stove use. In some cases, that number is much higher.” That report got widespread news coverage. But just a day or two after those stories were published, the group walked back its claims, with one RMI official telling the Washington Examiner that the new study "does not assume or estimate a causal relationship" between childhood asthma and natural gas stoves.

That RMI study conveniently ignored a definitive study published in Lancet Respiratory Medicine, which followed half a million schoolchildren in 47 countries over a multi-year period. The 2013 study concluded, “We detected no evidence of an association between the use of gas as a cooking fuel and either asthma symptoms or asthma diagnosis.”

While the kerfuffle over gas stoves has largely died down, the Colorado-based outfit remains one of the biggest and most influential climate NGOs. Furthermore, RMI is aggressively pushing efforts to implement building codes across the country that outlaw gas stoves and appliances.

RMI is pushing these policies even though 69% of voters oppose bans on gas stoves. However, the gas bans are only one aspect of RMI’s radical agenda. In 2023, it published a report with the Bezos Earth Fund, which claimed, “the fossil fuel era is over.” Furthermore, RMI says it aims to “identify and scale energy system interventions that will cut greenhouse gas emissions at least 50 percent by 2030,” and claims it is “transforming the global energy system to secure a clean, prosperous, zero-carbon future for all.”

This screenshot from RMI’s 2024 annual report shows the group is getting funding from six federal agencies.

Given its promotion of quack science, as well as its anti-consumer-far-left agenda, why is RMI getting federal funding? According to its latest annual report, RMI gets funding from the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Department of State, Department of Transportation, General Services Administration, and the US Trade and Development Agency. It is also getting funding from the International Finance Corporation and World Bank.

RMI provides a prime example of the stunning growth and influence of the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex. It is getting millions of dollars in dark money per year from unnamed donors and vast sums from some of America’s biggest corporations.

And now, it has insinuated itself inside the federal government. How did this happen? And how big are RMI’s federal contracts? Here’s a closer look, with three charts.