National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC)

Background

The National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) was incorporated as The National Black Chamber of Commerce, Inc. in 1993. The organization describes itself as “a nonprofit, nonpartisan, nonsectarian organization dedicated to the economic empowerment of African American communities.”

According to their website, “In essence, the NBCC is a 501(c)3 corporation that is on the leading edge of educating and training Black communities on the need to participate vigorously in this great capitalistic society known as America.”¹

The NBCC maintains at least 140 affiliated chapters in the United States, as well as international affiliate chapters based in Bahamas, Brazil, Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, France, Botswana, Cameroon and Jamaica.

The National Black Chamber of Commerce is a proponent of coal power and hydraulic fracturing (fracking), as NBCC President/CEO Harry Alford revealed in a column supporting the Kemper power plant in Kemper County, Mississippi.²

Stance on Climate Change

“Certainly the climate changes as time goes on – sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. So far, there is no pattern that seems to be very detrimental to our earth. There is an ebb and flow and it takes time to see any significant detrimental trend. It is like Stevie Wonder wrote, ‘When you believe in things you don’t understand; you suffer. Superstition ain’t the way’.” – Harry Alford, co-founder, President/CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce.³

Funding

According to ExxonSecrets, The National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) has received over $1,000,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.⁴

NBCC’s President Harry C. Alford is unapologetic about the organization’s fossil fuel funding. Alford states on the group’s website (emphasis added):

“Recently, a writer from USA Today wanted to know if the National Black Chamber of Commerce receives money from fossil fuel companies (coal, oil, natural gas, petrochemicals, etc.). That is a ‘no brainer’. Of course we do and it is only natural. The legacy of Blacks in this nation has been tied to the miraculous history of fossil fuel and the economic growth in communities because of the successful harvest of fossil fuels. Consistent with the emergence of the Industrial Revolution and the availability of the Homestead Act for freed slaves, fossil fuels have been our economic friend.”⁵

Conservative Transparency details the National Black Chamber of Commerce’s funding as follows, with data going up to 2013:⁶

Donor	Contribution
American Petroleum Institute	$75,000
DonorsTrust	$25,000
Exxon Mobil	$835,000
MyWireless.org	$150,000
Grand Total	$1,085,000

990 Forms

Key People

According to their website, “The National Black Chamber of Commerce does not distribute information about our members to protect their privacy.”⁷

Harry C. Alford – President & CEO.⁸
Kay DeBow Alford – Co‐founder.⁹

Actions

April 6, 2020

NBCC, represented by Harry Alford, was signatory to an American Energy Alliance letter to President Donald Trump supporting the Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule which would scrap federal fuel economy mandates under the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) program.¹⁰

Describing CAFE, the letter contends: “Those families and individuals who prefer or need trucks, SUVs, and crossovers pay more to subsidize those who buy smaller vehicles or electric vehicles under the existing mandate. This significant, needless, and unjust cost is a very real regressive tax on American families that has made our country worse off.”¹¹

May 9, 2019

National Black Chamber of Commerce, represented by Harry C. Alford, signed on to an open letter organized by the American Energy Alliance designed to fight against an electric vehicle tax credit.¹²

“The American Energy Alliance has organized a coalition to proclaim in one unified voice that there should be no expansion of the misguided electric vehicle tax credit,” Thomas Pyle wrote in a statement, quoted at The Daily Caller. “There is no question that the electric vehicle tax credit distorts the auto market to no gain.”¹³

According to Pyle and others who signed the letter, electric vehicle tax credits “overwhelmingly benefit the rich.” DeSmog’s Koch vs. Clean project has systematically debunked this, among other well-rehearsed talking points and misinformation put forward by industry about electric vehicles.¹⁴

The letter cites research by the Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a group that has received over $600,000 from ExxonMobil and millions from “dark money” groups DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund.

February 12, 2018

The National Black Chamber of Commerce was one of several organizations to join Americans for Prosperity (AfP) in a coalition opposing a federal gas tax increase.¹⁵

“Raising the gas tax is a bad idea. It will make the burden of government on families and businesses heavier,” the coalition’s open letter read.¹⁶

Signatories include:¹⁷

Name	Title	Company
Brent Wm. Gardner	Chief Government Affairs Officer	Amer
Michael A. Needham	CEO	Heritage Action for America
Grover Norquist	President	Americans for Tax Reform
David McIntosh	President	Club for Growth
Nathan Nascimento	Executive Vice President	Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce
Mark Scribner	Senior Fellow	Competitive Enterprise Institute
Jason Pye	Vice President of Legislative Affairs	FreedomWorks
Tom Schatz	President	Citizens Against Government Waste
Pete Sepp	President	National Taxpayers Union
Phil Kerpen	President	American Commitment
Mario H. Lopez	President	Hispanic Leadership Fund
Daniel Garza	President	The Libre Initiative
Carrie L. Lukas	President	Independent Women’s Forum
Heather R. Higgins	President and CEO	Independent Women’s Voice
Harry C. Alford	President and CEO	National Black Chamber of Commerce
Jeffrey Mazella	President	Center for Individual Freedom
Donald Bryson	President	Civitas Action
David Barnes	Policy Director	Generation Opportunity
Norm Singleton	President	Campaign for Liberty
Judson Phillips	Founder	Tea Party Nation
Seton Motley	President	Less Government
Kim Crockett, Esq.	Vice President, Senior Fellow and General Counsel	Center of the American Experiment
Tom Brinkman, Jr.	Chairman	Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST)
Matthew Kandrach	President	Consumer Action for a Strong Economy (CASE)
Katie McAulliffe	Executive Director	Digital Liberty
Brett Healy	President	John K. MacIver Institute
Sean Noble	President	American Encore
Annette Meeks	CEO	Freedom Foundation of Minnesota
Andrew F. Quinlan	President	Center for Freedom and Prosperity

September 2017

A Bloomberg article on Harry Alford and the National Black Chamber of Commerce illustrates a connection between NBCC, Alford, and DCI Group LLC. DCI Group is a lobbying and PR firm, which has historically worked with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco and was behind the now-defunct Tech Central Station (TCS), a website that worked as a forum for climate change skeptics and received direct funding from ExxonMobil for “climate change support.” Bloomberg noted that many groups that benefited from the NBCC’s actions have also hired DCI, donated money to NBCC, or both. Examples included ExxonMobil, Penn National Gaming, and numerous others.¹⁸ ¹⁹

Bloomberg offered a summary chart of causes backed by the NBCC that also benefited large companies and investors, reproduced below:²⁰

NBCC ACTION	BENEFICIARY	HIRED DCI	DONATED TO NBCC
Opposed Puerto Rico bankruptcy bill	Investors in Puerto Rico bonds	Y
Criticized government handling of Fannie Mae	Investors in Fannie Mae shares	Y
Opposed limits on swipe fees	Visa		Y
Opposed pollution regulations	Exxon Mobil	Y	Y
Bought ad supporting phosphate mine	Mosaic
Backed Samsung at Int’l Trade Commission	Samsung in dispute with Apple	Y
Advocated for Argentine bondholders	Investors in Argentine bonds	Y
Supported solar measure backed by utilities	Gulf Power		Y
Opposed Anna Nicole Smith’s claim on fortune	Heirs of billionaire J. Howard Marshall II	Y
Opposed casino expansion in Maryland	Penn National Gaming	Y	Y
Fought “gainful employment” rule	For-profit college operator EDMC	Y	Y
Defended rum tariff rules in U.S. Virgin Islands	Fortune Brands and Diageo

January 12, 2017

NBCC’s President Harry C. Alford was a signatory to a January 12, 2017 official letter of support (PDF) for Scott Pruitt, in which numerous groups, including The Heartland Institute, American Energy Alliance (AEA), and others, declared that the Senate should “swiftly approve his nomination” for Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Other signatories of the letter included:²¹

Thomas Pyle, American Energy Alliance
Michael Needham, Heritage Action for America
Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform
Kent Lassman, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Adam Brandon, FreedomWorks
David McIntosh, Club for Growth
Phil Kerpen, American Commitment
Craig Richardson, Energy and Environment Action Team
David Williams, Taxpayers Protection Alliance
Jim Martin , 60 Plus
Andrew Langer, Institute for Liberty
Heather Higgins, Independent Women’s Voice
Independence Institute
Richard Martin, Americans for Limited Government
Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST)
Brett Healy, MacIver Institute
Joseph Bast, Heartland Institute
George Landrith, Frontiers of Freedom
Randy Eminger, Energy Policy Network
Paul Gessing, Rio Grande Foundation
Mike Nasi, Balanced Energy for Texas
Brent Mead, Montana Policy Institute
Forest Thigpen, Mississippi Center for Public Policy

June 13, 2016

The National Black Chamber of Commerce was listed as a creditor in Peabody Energy’s 2016 bankruptcy filings, reports the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD/PRWatch).²²

While the available bankruptcy documents do not list the scale or dates of funding, they outline Peabody Energy’s financial ties to a large network of groups promoting climate change denial.²³

Prominent individuals appearing in the documents include climate deniers Willie Soon, Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer and Richard Berman. The long list of organizations also includes groups such as Americans for Prosperity, American Legislative Exchange Council, CFACT, Institute for Energy Research, State Policy Network, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and dozens more.²⁴

The Guardian also analysed and reported on the Peabody bankruptcy findings:²⁵

“These groups collectively are the heart and soul of climate denial,” said Kert Davies, founder of the Climate Investigation Center, who has spent 20 years tracking funding for climate denial. “It’s the broadest list I have seen of one company funding so many nodes in the denial machine.”

The company’s filings reveal funding for a range of organisations which have fought Barack Obama’s plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and denied the very existence of climate change. […]

Among Peabody’s beneficiaries, the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change has insisted – wrongly – that carbon emissions are not a threat but “the elixir of life” while the American Legislative Exchange Council is trying to overturn Environmental Protection Agency rules cutting emissions from power plants. Meanwhile, Americans for Prosperity campaigns against carbon pricing. The Oklahoma chapter was on the list. […]

“The breadth of the groups with financial ties to Peabody is extraordinary. Thinktanks, litigation groups, climate scientists, political organisations, dozens of organisations blocking action on climate all receiving funding from the coal industry,” said Nick Surgey, director of research for the Center for Media and Democracy.

“We expected to see some denial money, but it looks like Peabody is the treasury for a very substantial part of the climate denial movement.”

Notable organizations listed in the initial documents include:

Notable individuals named in the initial documents include the following:

November 4, 2015

The National Black Chamber of Commerce’s President and CEO Harry Alford published an article in the Philadelphia Tribune where he describes global warming as a “costly farce.”²⁶

“[The NOAA and NASA ]have reported that there has been no global warming detected for the last 18 years. That is over 216 months in a row that there has been no detected global warming. At the same time, sea ice in Antarctica is building up at record levels,” Alford writes. “

“No global warming, but millions of jobs have been erased through adverse regulations in the name of addressing the global warming issue. Billions of dollars, mostly tax dollars, have been spent trying to address the same ‘ghost.’ Many low-income and minority communities have greatly suffered from these onerous regulations that seem to be made in vain.”

Alford says that the “the National Black Chamber of Commerce has been slandered for its energy positions”, but claims that “we are right and they are wrong.”

However, climate scientists provide an explanation for this supposed hiatus in global warming. According to Michael Mann at Penn State University, “There certainly has not been a hiatus in global warming — global warming hasn’t stopped, even though you still hear those contrarian talking points.”²⁷

An 2015 analysis by US government scientists in the journal Nature and Climate Change suggested that if temporary natural fluctuations were ignored then world was probably now warming at a rate of about 0.2°C per decade — higher than the IPCC’s longer-term average.²⁸

August 25, 2015

The National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) was a “Supporting Organization” at the Heartland Institute‘s “Affordable Energy Summit 8.0,” which was co-sponsored with the Libertarian Party of Nevada in Las Vegas. Niger Innis, who serves on the NBCC’s Board of Directors, was a speaker at the summit.²⁹

According to the Affordable Energy Summit’s “Events” webpage, the purpose of the summit was to “discuss the costs of climate change, as well as the fiscal and environmental impact of the so-called ‘Clean Power Plan.’” ³⁰ The “Events” page of the Affordable Energy Summit’s website goes on to state that the speakers at the National Clean Energy Summit, which took place just one day earlier, “believe that evidence of man-made global warming is enough to justify any action intended to solve the problem, without regard for effectiveness and without any regard for the expense.”³¹

The Heartland Institute’s James Taylor wrote in Forbes that, “Unlike the Clean Energy Summit, the Affordable Energy Summit will present the full picture on energy, economics, and the environment.” Taylor asserts that wind and solar power initiatives are “not only prohibitively expensive, but they produce worse environmental damage than the conventional power Obama and Reid seek to vilify.”³²

July 28, 2015

The National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) announced that it had joined forces with Consumers for Smart Solar effort to support the “Smart Solar Amendment, “ which would be a “Consumer-friendly alternative to the Shady Solar Amendment proposed by Floridians for Solar Choice.”³³

NBCC submitted a brief to the Florida Supreme Court, claiming that the Solar Amendment was misleading.³⁴

“As an advocate of small and minority-owned businesses, the National Black Chamber of Commerce is concerned with the substantial, negative impacts the Shady Solar Amendment may have on small and minority businesses,” said Harry C. Alford, President/CEO of NBCC. “These negative impacts – potential increases in electric service rates and higher state and local taxes – are why we oppose the Shady Solar Amendment.”³⁵

June, 2015

As reported by Media Matters, The National Black Chamber of Commerce joined other organizations including Americans for Prosperity, the Beacon Hill Institute, and the State Policy Network in an op-ed campaign opposing the EPA’s climate change plan. NBCC President Harry C. Alford alleged in newspapers across the U.S. that the Clean Power Plan would impose “economic hardship” on blacks and Hispanics.³⁶

Seven nearly-identicall op-eds were published:

Media Matters also reports that of the seven reports that the NBCC cites in the op-eds, three predate the Clean Power Plan, one was a preliminary analysis by a mining group, and the others received funding from fossil fuel interests.

The Op-Eds make reference to a study made by the National Black Chamber of Commerce that has also been repeated cited across conservative media sources. The original study, titled “Potential Impact of Proposed EPA Regulations on Low Income Groups and Minorities” is available here (PDF).

According to the study’s abstract, “EPA is proposing new regulations, including guidelines to reduce CO2 emissions from existing fossil-fueled power plants. These regulations would have serious economic, employment, and energy impacts at the national level and for all states, and the impacts on low-income groups, Blacks, and Hispanics would be especially severe. The EPA rules would: 1) Significantly reduce U.S. GDP every year over the next two decades – over $2.3 trillion; 2) Destroy millions of jobs; 3) More than double the cost of power and natural gas to over $1 trillion; 4) Require the average family to pay over $1,225 more for power and gas in 2030 than in 2012.”

The report was prepared by Management Information Services, Inc. According to the group’s website, the company has a history of providing services and reports for the oil and coal industries (American Electric Power Company, Chesapeake Energy, Energy Corporation of America, Peabody Energy, Washington Gas Company, Affordable Power Alliance, National Coal Council, to name a few).³⁷ ³⁸

Harry Alford also testified at the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on June 23, 2015 to oppose the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. With reference to the NBCC study, Alford said that “The study finds that the Clean Power Plan will inflict severe and disproportionate economic burdens on poor families, especially minorities.” He continued, saying “The EPA’s proposed regulation for GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions from existing power plants is a slap in the face to poor and minority families.” Video below.³⁹

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) rebutted this view, saying that states who have taken action on climate change have seen their economies grow:

“Many states, such as New York and Delaware, have already taken action to reduce the largest emitter of carbon pollution – power plant emissions,” Carper said. “As we will hear today, the economies of these states continue to grow at a faster rate than the states that have yet to put climate regulations in place. However, we need all states to do their fair share to protect the air we breathe and stem the tide of climate change. The EPA’s Clean Power Plan attempts to do just that.”

September, 2013

The National Black Chamber of Commerce was a signatory to a letter designed by the American Energy Alliance (AEA) asking Congress not to renew wind energy tax credits that would expire at the end of the year.⁴⁰

Other signers of the letter included: