Inside the Gas Industry’s Plan to Sink Nuclear Power

Welcome to Pay Dirt—exclusive reporting and research from The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay on corruption, campaign finance, and influence-peddling in the nation’s capital. For Beast Inside members only.

A handful of corporate front groups have sprung up since last year to do political battle over proposals to prop up Pennsylvania’s struggling nuclear energy industry. Leading the fight against those proposals is the state’s natural gas industry, and PAY DIRT has exclusively obtained their playbook for doing so.

The industry's leading advocacy outfit, the American Petroleum Institute, is organizing opposition to pro-nuclear legislation in Harrisburg through an initiative called No Nuclear Bailouts. API has paid for social media ads and mail pieces hammering House Bill 11, which would include nuclear in the portfolio of “alternative energy” sources that count towards utilities’ requirements for carbon-free power sources.