AARON PATRICK: Are American anti-gas activists trying to sabotage one of Australia’s top exports?

You won’t see the Sunrise Project on social media or television, hear its employees on the radio, or see them carrying its banners in the streets.

But the Sydney-based organisation may be Australia’s best-funded environmental charity, and a driving force behind the climate wars.

Founded and run by a former Greenpeace activist, in recent years the Sunrise Project’s financial contributions have overtaken the much-older and better-known Greenpeace, WWF and the Australian Conservation Foundation.

Sunrise uses its financial resources to fight development of new oil and gas fields. The industries themselves acknowledge they contribute to global warming, and support cutting Australia’s overall greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050, a policy that will hurt their shareholders.

But the charity’s rapid growth and almost-invisible profile raises a governance question: is the Sunrise Project a vehicle for foreigners to undermine an industry that contributes $100 billion to the economy each year, and pays $17 billion in taxes?

Concealing donors

In a parliamentary hearing in February, Liberal senator Jane Hume cited emails sent by the Sunrise Project’s founder and executive director, John Hepburn, in which he talked about meeting with lawyers to keep his donors secret.

“We are seeking advice on steps we might take to avoid disclosure, challenge and limit disclosure, or to ensure that any disclosure is limited to the committee members and is not made public,” Mr Hepburn wrote, according to Senator Hume.

“I do have concerns about the potential PR impact of disclosure of both our funding and grantees.”

The Sunrise Project did not respond to a request to interview a spokesperson or provide a written comment.

Funding the CFMEU

The Sunrise Project generated $75 million revenue in 2023, a huge sum for an environmental charity, and had cash reserves of $36 million.

It does not pretend to be non-partisan, which may be why it was targeted by Senator Hume. The charity has donated to GetUp!, a Labor-aligned campaign group, and the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union, better known as the CFMEU, according to the Australian Electoral Commission.

The leader of The Sunrise Project’s anti-gas-and-oil team is a former GetUp! campaign manager, Myriam Lyons, according to her LinkedIn profile.

The Sunrise Project’s biggest funder in recent years was the Sequoia Climate Foundation, a large California-based climate charity connected to an American billionaire, Frederick Taylor. Public records show Sunrise got $US28.5 million ($43 million) between 2020 and 2023 from Sequoia and a related charity, the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund.

There is nothing illegal or unethical about charities receiving money from overseas. But its foreign contributions are so large, and activities so opaque, that the public might question its commitment to being a responsible political and economic activist.

After all, corporate transparency is often, quite rightly, demanded by activist shareholders who want to influence companies.

Disrupting insurance

One of the few campaigns the Sunrise Project has described publicly took place in 2017, when it discovered the location of an insurance conference in San Francisco. Its activists snuck in and disrupted the event.

“I think it was a real shock for them,” Mr Hepburn told a podcast in 2021. “Up until that point, none of them had been held accountable for this vast hypocrisy of the insurance industry and the companies that they were responsible for leading.”

Energy industry leaders wonder if The Sunrise Project helped finance a discredited legal challenge against a $5.8 billion natural gas project planned by Santos in the Timor Sea.

Last year the Federal Court found the Environmental Defenders Office, a legal charity, used made-up evidence to argue against the project, Barossa, which involved the coaching of Indigenous witnesses.

The EDO was ordered to pay $9 million in legal costs. Believing the Sunrise Project may have helped fund the court challenge, Santos got a court order requiring the charity to hand over its communications with the EDO.

Those emails remain confidential.

On Tuesday Barossa project received its final government clearances, a decision condemned by the Climate Council, another climate activist group. Santos shares rose 6 per cent.

Australia was the third-largest exporter of liquified natural gas in 2023. If American anti-gas activists are financing the disruption of one of the nation’s top industries, surely Australians have a right to know?