Over the past several years, a network of environmental groups working in Louisiana has helped drive opposition to oil and gas development, industrial expansion, and carbon capture projects across the state.
Many of those same groups are connected, directly or indirectly, to a national funding pipeline backed by George Soros and his affiliated organizations.
At the same time, activists at the center of Louisiana’s anti-carbon capture campaigns have repeatedly denied any connection to that network, dismissing such claims as false or misleading.
But a closer look at publicly available data tells a more complicated story.
Since 2019, Soros and his affiliated donor network, including the Open Society Foundations and the Tides Foundation, have directed at least $18.5 million into environmental organizations operating in Louisiana. These funds have supported a range of advocacy efforts aimed at opposing energy development in the state, including the expansion of carbon capture infrastructure.
While activists often point to the absence of direct checks from Soros himself, that framing ignores how modern advocacy networks operate. Funding rarely moves in a straight line. Instead, it flows through interconnected national and regional organizations that provide resources, staffing, legal support, and strategic coordination to local groups.
In Louisiana, that network is extensive.
Organizations such as Step Up Louisiana and Rise St. James have received funding tied to these national pipelines, either directly or through fiscal sponsors aligned with the same donor ecosystem. At the same time, national groups with an established presence in Louisiana, like the Sierra Club and Earthjustice, have collectively taken in more than $14 million from those same sources since 2019.
These organizations are not passive participants. They play a central role in shaping the anti-carbon capture campaign—bringing legal challenges, organizing opposition, and amplifying messaging across the state. In some cases, national groups have directly coordinated with Louisiana-based activists on efforts to block energy projects, further blurring the line between local advocacy and national strategy.
Taken together, the pattern is difficult to ignore.
What is presented publicly as a decentralized, grassroots resistance begins to look more like a coordinated campaign supported by a well-funded network with national reach. That distinction matters—not just for the sake of transparency, but for understanding what is truly driving the debate over carbon capture in Louisiana.
The stakes are significant. As global markets and domestic policy increasingly prioritize lower-carbon production, carbon capture is emerging as a key factor in determining where industrial investment flows. For a state like Louisiana, whose economy is deeply tied to energy, manufacturing, and exports, the ability to deploy that technology could shape its economic trajectory for decades.
Opposition groups are entitled to challenge those projects. But the argument changes when the movement is framed as purely local while drawing support from millions of dollars in national funding tied to George Soros and his broader network.
