Edison Electric Institute

The Edison Electric Institute (EEI) is a powerful, Washington, DC-based trade association for the electric utility industry. While the association publicly claims to support action to address climate change, EEI’s chairman Tom Fanning (CEO of Southern Company) has denied the human impact on the climate, claiming that climate change is a natural process that has been happening for “millennia.”

DDC Contracts

EEI has contracted DDC Advocacy sporadically over the years, paying them a total of $3.9 million for years 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2017 combined. Reporting from the Energy and Policy Institute shows evidence that DDC worked on EEI’s We Stand For Energy Campaign, an advocacy campaign that supported various legislation opposing distributed solar energy.

DDC Total from EEI: $3.9 million

Contracts by year between 2012 and 2017:
- 2012: $548,163
- 2014: $1,326,106
- 2016: $1,086,988
- 2017: $941,902

Hawthorn Group Contracts

Hawthorn Group is EEI’s newest PR contractor, garnering its first contract with the trade association in 2016. Hawthorn was recently caught using a contractor that paid actors to create the appearance of grassroots support for a new Entergy power plant, an EEI member company in Louisiana. This wasn’t Hawthorn’s first instance of deceiving the public. In 2009, Hawthorn hired a firm that wrote forged letters to members of Congress that looked like they were from the NAACP and other organizations.

EEI did not continue their relationship with Hawthorn into 2017.

Hawthorn Total: $3,000,000