Kentucky Resources Council (KRC)

Background

The Kentucky Resources Council (KRC) is a left-of-center environmental law and education nonprofit organization that opposes the use of hydrocarbon and nuclear energy and advocates using weather-dependent energy sources. KRC also provides legal representation to individuals, community organizations, and local governments. The organization offers legal advocacy, education, and policy support, and engages in litigation involving coal mining, water resources, energy infrastructure, and public lands policy. ^{1  2}

Activities

In July 2003, Kentucky Resources Council worked with Citizens Coal Council and other groups, along with lawyers from Earthjustice, in filing litigation challenging federal rules that allowed coal companies to collapse mines in what the plaintiffs deemed as “sensitive areas.” ³

Opposition to Nuclear Power

See also Opposition to Nuclear Energy

In 2025, the Kentucky General Assembly adopted a resolution “declaring that nuclear power generation is a clean and dispatchable means of providing baseload electricity to the residents and businesses of the Commonwealth.” In a retrospective on the work of the general assembly in 2025, the Kentucky Resources Council listed the pro-nuclear resolution among its examples of “bad” legislation passed during the year. ^{4  5}

Opposition to Energy Planning and Inventory Commission

In 2024, the Kentucky General Assembly passed the Republican-led Senate Bill 349, designed to prioritize grid reliability by establishing the Energy Planning and Inventory Commission (EPIC). This commission reviews utility applications to retire traditional oil and gas power plants. ⁶ The Kentucky Resources Council aggressively lobbied against this legislation, arguing that it creates unnecessary “red tape” that supports uneconomic coal plants at the expense of weather-dependent energy. While KRC maintains that its opposition is inspired by a desire to reduce taxes, proponents of the bill, including the Kentucky Association of Electric Cooperatives and the Kentucky Coal Association, have argued that KRC’s push for a rapid transition to weather-dependent energy sources like wind and solar poses a threat to the state’s energy independence. They have claimed that KRC’s advocacy ignores the warnings from grid operators about potential electricity shortages and that SB 349 is necessary for Kentucky to have dependable energy options. ^{7  8  9}

Following its passage, Governor Andy Beshear (D) vetoed the bill. However, the Republican-controlled legislature successfully overrode the veto on April 12, 2024 to enact the bill into law despite the Governor’s objections and the opposition from environmental groups like KRC. ^{10  11  6  12}

Funding

The Kentucky Resources Council poses as a small environmental group but has been categorized as part of the extensive “anti-nuclear, anti-energy movement” and relies heavily on funding from large environmental and social justice grantmaking networks. ¹³

The Kentucky Resources Council’s funding is primarily from grants from national and regional philanthropic organizations that specialize in environmental and social justice advocacy. The Elhapa Foundation allocated a total of $296,000 from 2023 to 2024. ^{14  15} The Community Foundation of Louisville, a grantmaking and pass-through funder of organizations focused on education, racial equity, and social issues, allocated $125,200 to KRC in 2024. ¹⁶ The United States Energy Foundation, a partnership of philanthropic organizations that funnels millions of dollars (including from the MacArthur Foundation) into state-level “unbranded” campaigns to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy, allocated $310,000 to KRC in 2023 and 2024. ^{17  18  19}

Leadership

In July 2021, Ashley Wilmes became the executive director of the Kentucky Resources Council after KRC’s founder Tom FitzGerald retired. She was previously an environmental attorney and worked as a staff attorney for KRC, where she specialized in litigating cases related to administrative law, waste management, and water quality. ²⁰

In January 2026, Wilmes was appointed by Governor Andy Beshear (D) to the Kentucky Environmental Education Council (KEEC), a state agency within the Education and Labor Cabinet. One of KEEC’s goals is to improve so-called environmental literacy across the Commonwealth to garner support for the Environmental Education Master Plan, which aims to balance sustainability with the economy. ^{21  22}