Push to stop renewable energy at state levels

(p 478)

Then, starting around 2011, [Kansas Senator Moxley] watched Koch Industries transform everything. A central focus of Koch’s efforts was beating back the mandates to support renewable energy.

(p 480) 

Koch’s efforts in Kansas were part of a multistate campaign to push back renewable-energy subsidies. Koch’s primary targets were so-called renewable energy standards that required states to buy wind and solar power. Koch characterized these mandates as a form of crony capitalism. The Heartland Institute, which Koch funded, helped write a bill to repeal such standards. The bill was then taken up by ALEC, the Koch-funded conference of state legislators, and then introduced in more than a dozen states between 2013 and 2014.

ALEC’s efforts bore fruit. Ohio repealed its renewable standard, as did West Virginia. In Kansas, the fight lasted for years. [Kansas Senator] Moxley repeatedly voted against the bill to repeal the renewable-energy mandates, as did a handful of other Republicans and many Democrats. But the financial power behind the bill was too strong to resist. In 2015, a version of the bill finally passed, removing the mandates and making the renewable-energy standards voluntary.