Free-market research group's climate proposal denounced by host university

The host university of the free marketeer Beacon Hill Institute has repudiated its proposal to carry out research with the express purpose of undermining a regional climate change initiative.

The institute, based in the economics department of Suffolk University, had sought $38,825 to carry out an economic analysis that would aid efforts to weaken or roll back a five-year effort by states in the north-east to reduce carbon pollution, known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

The proposal from Beacon Hill made no secret of its goal. "Success will take the form of media recognition, dissemination to stakeholders, and legislative activity that will pare back or repeal RGGI," the funding proposal said.

In a prepared statement, Suffolk University made clear it had not been consulted about Beacon Hill's research plans – and would not have authorised the grant proposal if it had been.

"The stated research goals, as written, were inconsistent with Suffolk University's mission," Greg Gatlin, the university's vice-president for marketing and communications, said in an email.

Gatlin went on to write that Beacon Hill had not followed university rules when it submitted its grant proposal, which was presented for consideration to the Searle Freedom Trust, a leading funder of ultra-conservative causes, on Beacon Hill's behalf by the State Policy Network, a coalition of similar ultra-conservative entities.

"The University has existing protocols in place that require approval for all grant proposals," Gatlin said. "The Beacon Hill Institute's grant proposal did not go through the university's approval process. The university would not have authorized this grant proposal as written."

Beacon Hill did not in the end see its proposal funded – a setback for an organisation which has specialised in marshalling economic argument to roll back clean energy programmes in the states.

David Tuerck, the executive director of the Beacon Hill Institute, confirmed the authenticity of the document and admitted that the proposal had not been funded by the Searle Foundation.

However, he pushed back strongly at the suggestion that BHI by – defining success according to a specific political outcome – was engaged in lobbying or other inappropriate activity.

"There is never any lobbying," he told the Guardian. "Maybe I need to look up the definition again but lobbying consists of buttonholing legislators and other policymakers to get a particular result on a particular issue and we never do that."

The institute claims on its website to have conducted 16 separate research projects since 2009 on state clean energy programmes, partnering with institutions in Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Maine, Michigan, Kansas, Delaware, Minnesota, Ohio, Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico, Montana and North Carolina.

All arrived at the same broadly similar conclusion: that Renewable Portfolio Standards, or state regulations requiring electricity companies to source energy from wind and solar power were bad for the economy.

Greenpeace said of the effort: "It's a cookie-cutter play to back the American Legislative Exchange Council's efforts to roll back RPS."

In this most recent proposal, Beacon requested $38,825 from Searle to carry out research into the economic impact of the RGGI cap-and-trade system operating in nine states .

In addition to defining success at helping legislators to pare back or repeal RGGI, the proposal noted BHI had offered testimony at state legislative hearings to repeal RPS standards in Kansas.

Tuerck said offering testimony at legislative hearings on renewable energy in Kansas did not fall into that category.

He admitted, however, that the framing of the funding proposal could be seen as political. "Our understanding is that many foundations solicit research in the expectation that that research is going to lead to what they see as constructive policy changes. It was put in there to appeal to them but we maintain that there is a difference in appealing to a granter, using the language we think would be appealing to them, and lobbying."

It also dangles the prospect that its research findings and public relations campaign could prompt Maine's governor, Paul Lepage, to quit the RGGI, as Chris Christie of New Jersey did in 2011, as well as spark possible defections from a similar voluntary cap-and-trade system among midwestern states.

"Given the state's competitiveness problems, Governor Lepage could make Maine the next state to opt out of the cap-and-trade program," the proposal says.

The Beacon Hill Institute, technically an affiliate rather than a full member of the SPN, operates out of the economics department of Suffolk University in Boston. It consists of four full-time staff. Paul Tuerck, its executive director, is also an economics professor at the university and served for many years as chairman of the economics department.