How JB Pritzk­er, a rumored Kamala VP con­tender, boost­ed com­pa­nies linked to his cousin

As he cam­paigned in 2018 to be the next gov­er­nor of Illi­nois, Demo­c­rat J.B. Pritzk­er was on a mis­sion to con­vince vot­ers of his com­mit­ment to fight­ing cli­mate change. In an inter­view with the Chica­go Sun-Times, the wealthy busi­ness­man and heir to the Hyatt hotel chain for­tune tout­ed his back­ing of the Paris Cli­mate Accord and vowed to increase state invest­ments in bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy. Pritzk­er, more­over, remarked on his sup­port for a lit­tle-known cli­mate ini­tia­tive in Chica­go.
“I was one of the ear­li­est sup­port­ers of the Clean Ener­gy Trust, which pro­motes job cre­ation and entre­pre­neur­ship in the clean ener­gy indus­try,” Pritzk­er told the news­pa­per, refer­ring to a non­prof­it group formed in 2010 that counts one of its found­ing board mem­bers as his cousin, ex-Hyatt Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion CEO Nicholas Pritzk­er. His cousin was co-chair­man until 2020 of the orga­ni­za­tion, which list­ed Nicholas Pritzk­er as a “direc­tor emer­i­tus” on its tax forms filed in 2022.
The char …