A group of clean energy investors won a major victory in Texas this week after it spent more than $1 million to help defeat one of the country’s biggest opponents of renewables.
Now the investors say they have $15 million on hand and hope to flex their political muscles nationally — including by helping Republicans who support wind and solar energy stay in power.
“This is an effort to shape a pro-clean-energy majority in the Congress, regardless of party,” said Thomas Matzzie, a renewable energy executive who is leading the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC.
The group is funded by renewable energy developers and philanthropists and is heavily backed by Chris Larsen, the billionaire co-founder of the cryptocurrency platform Ripple.
On Thursday, they were openly gloating because Representative Chip Roy, a Republican from Texas, lost a runoff for his party’s primary for Texas attorney general. Mr. Roy led the fight last year to abolish manufacturing tax credits for wind, solar, electric vehicles and other clean energy production that Democrats had passed during the Biden administration.
Mayes Middleton, a conservative state senator who won the primary, attacked Mr. Roy for lacking sufficient loyalty to President Trump. The clean energy coalition helped amplify that message by spending $1.1 million on ads highlighting Mr. Roy’s clashes with Mr. Trump and arguing the congressman was “not MAGA enough for Texas.”
Mr. Roy said in a text message that he believed the clean energy executives played “zero role” in his defeat. He posted on social media that he was “happy” to have crushed the energy credits.
“I think my opponents willingness to spend $30 million and tell mountains of lies is what impacted the race,” Mr. Roy said.
Mr. Matzzie disagreed, saying the coalition had a “small but important” part in Mr. Roy’s defeat. He also said he felt it was important to simply remind lawmakers that the industry is watching and willing to spend money for supporters and against opponents.
“You need to put a dollar amount in your head now the next time you come after this industry and think, ‘If I act against the industry, they might spend a million or two in my next race,’” Mr. Matzzie said.
The group is also exploring involvement in other campaigns, including in South Carolina, Arizona and Florida, said Chris Coffey, who leads Tusk Strategies, a political and strategic consulting firm working with the PAC.
Mr. Middleton, who now faces a Democratic opponent, Nathan Johnson, in the attorney general race, is no friend to wind and solar energy, either. He has introduced legislation making both harder to develop in Texas.
But that doesn’t seem to bother Mr. Matzzie and his colleagues, in light of Mr. Roy’s vehement opposition. Neither does the fact that the next person they are supporting, the Iowa Republican representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, has been an imperfect ally of renewable power, backing wind and solar but also fossil fuels since she took office in 2021.
“We are not taking a strictly partisan view” when it comes to deciding whom to support, said Mr. Matzzie, who is the chief executive of CleanChoice Energy, a renewable energy company, and once was the Washington director of MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy group.
That approach is a sign that the clean energy industry is “finally growing up and getting smart politically,” said Leah Stokes, a professor of environmental politics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
She and others argued that the renewable industry should reward advocates of clean energy even if they aren’t die-hard allies.
“The fossil fuel industry has been doing this for decades: They do whatever it takes to make sure their industry is protected,” Ms. Stokes said, adding, “There is no fundamental reason solar has to be a left-right issue, and it’s way long past time that the clean energy industry got its act together politically.”
The coalition has already spent $150,000 on ads boosting Ms. Miller-Meeks in her primary on Tuesday against an opponent, David Pautsch, who says wind and solar energy is destroying the state. They plan to pour another $100,000 into ads for her this weekend. That level of spending by the group would dwarf what Mr. Pautsch has raised so far.
“She’s all for the wind turbines and the solar panels,” Mr. Pautsch said of Ms. Miller-Meeks in an interview, adding, “I’m diametrically opposed to all those things.”
Ms. Miller-Meeks was one of 18 Republicans who asked Speaker Mike Johnson to protect the $370 billion in clean energy tax credits and incentives Democrats had enacted as part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
Republicans eliminated virtually all federal support for clean energy in a tax bill that Mr. Trump championed, and signed into law, last year.
Mr. Roy had led the charge on that law for killing those tax credits. But Ms. Miller-Meeks, despite her earlier opposition to cutting the green provisions, voted for the measure as well.
A spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Katie Smith, said Ms. Miller-Meeks’s vote for the Trump tax law showed the PAC was making a mistake in backing her.
Ms. Miller-Meeks’s office did not respond to a request for an interview.
The Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC ads will not talk about Ms. Miller-Meeks’s support for renewables. Instead, members said, they will emphasize Mr. Trump’s support for her.
And Mr. Matzzie did not commit to supporting Ms. Miller-Meeks in the general election, even if she wins her primary. The Cook Political Report has rated Ms. Miller-Meeks’s race with her likely Democratic opponent, Christina Bohannan, as a “toss up.”
Lisa Friedman is a Times reporter who writes about how governments are addressing climate change and the effects of those policies on communities.
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