EQT Corp. President Starts “All of the Above” Energy Nonprofit
It’s not a stretch to say that Toby Rice—who made a name for himself in natural gas after the Appalachian Basin company he started merged with a leading producer in 2017—is all about energy (The Wall Street Journal , subscription).
All of the above: In addition to his day job, the EQT Corp. president and CEO (and NAM board member) “is a co-founder of Energy Corps, a nonprofit that aims to help developing nations such as Ghana, Zambia and Burundi build out their energy infrastructure and prosper.”
- But unlike some other energy nonprofits, this one emphasizes using all available sources to get electricity access to impoverished people worldwide.
- “We’re deploying renewables where it makes sense; we’re doing hydrocarbon solutions where it makes sense,” Rice said. “It’s going to be an all-of-the-above approach.”
- Rice and his wife, Aileen Rice, have personally donated $3 million to Energy Corps and plan to give more.
Why this is different: Developing countries haven’t benefited much from the large sums that have been spent to fight climate change, Rice told the Journal.
- His sentiments “echo a view in the U.S. that the pursuit of net-zero goals has come at the expense of addressing global poverty,” including a recent op-ed by philanthropist Bill Gates saying both “extremes” on climate change “are just wrong.”
What it’s done: Energy Corps, founded last year, has already given grants to the Bettering Human Lives Foundation, a nonprofit started in 2024 by now-Energy Secretary Chris Wright to give expanded access to clean cooking fuel, and the Switch Energy Alliance, which develops educational programs.
- Switch’s chairman, Scott Tinker, is Energy Corps’ other co-founder.
- Other grant recipients include solar-powered clean water organization Innovation: Africa, and think tank IEA Ghana, which looks at ways of building nuclear power plants in West Africa.