President Joe Biden's Energy Department on Thursday announced the seven-figure award to LanzaTech, a carbon capture company that in April 2021 inked a partnership with Sinopec Capital, the clean energy investment arm of a Chinese state-owned oil conglomerate. This is not the first time the department has showered LanzaTech with taxpayer cash—the company received more than $10 million in grant payments in the months after it partnered with China, the Washington Free Beacon reported in December.
Those payments alarmed Senate Republicans, with Wyoming's John Barrasso urging Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm in a December letter to stop "making the same mistake of enriching China's technological efforts at the expense of taxpayers." "The awarding of these grants and loans," Barrasso wrote, "directly impacts the national security of the United States." Arkansas's Tom Cotton similarly implored the Biden administration to stop "handing millions of taxpayer dollars to a Chinese-backed company" and instead encourage "American energy production and energy independence."
Biden's Energy Department, however, failed to heed the warnings. For Barrasso, the department's decision to stand by LanzaTech is "outrageous" given the company's "direct ties to communist China."
"This isn't about protecting the environment," Barrasso told the Free Beacon. "The White House is using its far-left climate policies as an excuse to send taxpayer money to help countries that hate us."
