Almost literally since day one of the Cape Wind project, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound has portrayed itself as a champion of protecting the environment and the public interest.

Greenpeace, the international environmental advocacy organization, is calling that image into question with a new report, “Bill Koch: The Dirty Money Behind Cape Wind Opposition.”

“After making a killing peddling dirty energy, William Koch turns around and uses his immense personal wealth to fund the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the primary group that finds every possible way to undermine and delay Cape Wind,” Greenpeace said in a press release. “Even worse, he pays lobbyists through his Oxbow corporation to try and quietly kill the wind farm project altogether.”

According to Joseph Smyth, Greenpeace’s media officer, the organization has been keeping its eye on Cape Wind since its inception in 2001, when Greenpeace officials first met with Cape Wind Associates’ CEO, James Gordon.

“We’ve been watchdogging the project since that time, including grassroots campaigning and research,” Mr. Smyth said. “Part of that work has been confronting those who are opposing the project, from the late Senator (Edward M.) Kennedy to Bill Koch, so this report is a continuation of that line.”

Greenpeace earlier this year released a report on Koch Industries, which is run by Mr. Koch’s brothers Charles and David, and the company’s funding of climate change denial groups.

“After releasing that report, several journalists and colleagues asked why we didn’t focus more attention to the ‘other’ Koch, Bill,” Mr. Smyth said. “We have had a large file on him for some time, but noticed that there was no easily accessible online repository for all that is known; hence the project to develop this document, which we thought would be a helpful addendum to the Koch report, for those who are following the Kochs, as well as those following the Cape Wind Project.”

Audra Parker, the alliance’s CEO and president, said this report was just another “distraction” from Cape Wind’s supporters.

“The Alliance has over 5,000 donors, all of whom recognize the unparalleled value of Nantucket Sound,” Ms. Parker said in a statement to the Enterprise. “Greenpeace’s focus on the Alliance’s backing is nothing more than a distraction from the very real threats the Cape Wind project would pose to both the Cape and Islands community and to ratepayers throughout [Massachusetts] that would be forced to pay the exorbitant costs of this project, when green energy is abundantly available at a fraction of the cost of Cape Wind.”

Cape Wind officials had no comment on the report.

The seven-page report details Mr. Koch’s familial connections to Koch Industries, a 60-year-old company that traces its origins to the 1920s, when family patriarch Fred Koch developed a process for refining gasoline from crude oil. Koch Industries has since grown into an international conglomerate that records more than $100 billion in annual sales from petroleum refining, fuel pipelines, coal supply and trading, oil and gas exploration, chemicals and polymers, fertilizer production, ranching, and forestry products.

Mr. Koch worked for the company until the 1980s, when he attempted to wrest control of the company from his brothers. A series of lawsuits followed, with Mr. Koch winning some of those and walking away with millions of dollars.

The report, which also details Mr. Koch’s penchant for capitalizing on tax breaks and “expensive hobbies,” said that Mr. Koch formed the Oxbow Group in 1983 with awards from his legal battles. That conglomerate is focused on sales of petroleum coke (solid byproducts of the oil refining process) and coal mining, and according to Greenpeace has since its inception been hit with thousands of safety violations and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.

Greenpeace stated that the company’s poor environmental track record stands in stark contrast to Mr. Koch’s remarks about the Cape Cod Wind Farm project. The report noted that Mr. Koch owns an oceanfront home in Osterville, and in 2006 told Forbes magazine that the turbines would compromise Nantucket Sound’s scenic beauty—and interfere with his sailing hobby.

“Who would want to sail in a forest of windmills?” Mr. Koch told Forbes. “I don’t want this in my back yard.”

“Koch’s opposition to Cape Wind surpasses his verbal protest and manifests in his role as chairman for a front group that he also supports financially. He has been one of the largest donors to the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound,” the Greenpeace report stated.

Mr. Koch and “other wealthy opponents of the project” contributed 90 percent of the $11 million raised by the alliance in 2006, and Mr. Koch has personally donated $1.5 million to the alliance, on which he serves as co-chairman. He has also directed through Oxbow Energy $1 million to lobbyists to fight the project.

In 2006 an Oxbow-funded lobbyist met with Congressman Donald Young (R - Alaska), who, along with US Senator Ted Stevens (R - Alaska), later inserted language in a US Coast Guard reauthorization bill that called for a ban on offshore wind farm development within one and a half nautical miles of a shipping or ferry lane (the amendment failed).

The Greenpeace report, which includes a lengthy list of attributions for its content, may be viewed online at www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/usa/press-center/reports4/bill-koch-dirty-money-cape-wind-opposition.pdf.