Colleges with fossil fuel funding can become ‘vehicle of climate obstruction,’ study finds

Shell, one of the biggest oil companies in the world, gave $27.5 million to LSU in 2022 to fund the university’s Institute for Innovation in Energy. LSU President William F. Tate IV, second from left, poses with LSU mascot Mike the Tiger. A new paper calls for additional research into the influence of the fossil fuel industry on academia. (LSU photo)

For decades, oil and gas companies have donated tens to hundreds of millions of dollars to colleges and universities, sat on governing boards, sponsored scholarships and built pro-fossil fuel programming and curriculum — resulting in real or apparent conflicts of interest for universities and their researchers.

“Fossil fuel companies have embedded themselves in universities across the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and beyond,” according to the research paper published Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal WIREs Climate Change. “Archival documents show that the fossil fuel industry deliberately uses university partnerships to further its own interests.”

The new review by researchers from the United States, Canada and Ireland finds just a handful of studies that document the influence of the powerful industry on academia — a dynamic they believe requires much closer scrutiny.

The findings come at a time when experts and governments across the globe agree that sharply reducing the use of fossil fuels and increasing reliance on renewable energy are crucial to stalling or reversing climate change.

“For decades, medical professionals have recognized conflicts of interest due to ties with tobacco and pharmaceutical industries. They’ve measured the effects of those conflicts, and then they’ve taken steps to mitigate them,” University of Miami researcher Geoffrey Supran told Floodlight. “And nothing close to that level of concern or scrutiny or reform has been applied by climate and energy experts to fossil fuel industry funding.

“To the contrary, for the most part, university leaders have done nothing except encourage oil industry funding, along with funding from anywhere else they can get it.”

The researchers cite BP’s sponsorship of Princeton University’s Climate Mitigation Initiative and Shell’s funding of the Shell Enhanced Learning Fund at University of Alberta in Canada as examples of the various and ongoing ways fossil fuel companies strategically invest in higher education.

Their study of existing research on the subject found the fossil fuel industry receives “substantial material and reputational benefits” from its financial support of higher education.

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The researchers sifted through 14,000 academic papers measuring outside influence and potential conflicts of interest in academic institutions. The authors found just seven studies that specifically scrutinized the influence of the fossil fuel industry.

Such influence at universities has gone on for decades, the researchers note. They pointed to a 1978 manual for industries that advised “co-opting” academics and “identifying the leading experts in each relevant field and hiring them as consultants or advisors, or giving them research grants and the like … it must not be too blatant, for the experts themselves must not recognize that they have lost their objectivity.”

There are dozens of programs and even entire schools across the country funded by the fossil fuel industry. They include LSU, which has a simulated oil well on its Baton Rouge campus; its Institute for Innovation in Energy is sponsored by Shell. Some universities built on shale oil and gas reserves even lease their land to fracking companies.

More studies needed, researchers say

Prior research has shown that such industry-sponsored programming leads to biased research in favor of those industries. Fossil fuel influence, they wrote, “threatens to distort climate knowledge and action” and undermine universities’ role as “objective and unbiased” when it comes to research.

“There is already an emerging consensus around the scale and significance of this problem,” Supran said. “It felt as though it was important to step back and take a 30,000-foot view of this phenomenon and start by asking, ‘What do we already know?’ ”

The authors determined that non-governmental organizations, students and faculty have been raising the alarm on fossil fuel industry ties to academia for at least 20 years  but that the research on the impact of those ties is lacking. The researchers call for additional research into fossil fuel–university partnerships in other countries, such as ExxonMobil’s partnerships with universities in China, Qatar and the Netherlands.

Thursday’s study is the first of several the researchers intend to publish on fossil fuel influence and potential conflicts of interest at universities. The lead author was Sofia Hiltner, a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Michigan and a former research analyst at the Environmental Defense Fund.

Investigation probes fossil fuel influence

In May, Supran testified at a congressional hearing exploring the “Denial, disinformation and doublespeak” of the oil and gas industry to avoid climate change accountability.

A joint investigation by the U.S. House and Senate uncovered a strategy presentation from 2018 in which oil and gas giant BP recommended spending $1.1 million in the first year to fund white papers at institutions such as Princeton University and the Imperial College in London “highlighting the role of gas as a friend to renewables.”

The committee’s report said the memo was one of many pieces of evidence they’d seen that oil and gas companies actively “establish funded partnerships with academic institutions to enhance their credibility, shape academic research programs to provide studies supportive of a prolonged life for oil and gas, leverage the resulting research to their advantage, and bolster access to policymakers.”

In recent years, environmentalists and students have pressured universities to halt investing in fossil fuel interests and businesses responsible for climate change. Harvard University announced in 2021 it would pull its $42 billion endowment from the fossil fuel industry. In late 2023, Canada’s McGill University announced it would divest from direct holdings in 200 fossil fuel companies.

There has been less scrutiny on the money flowing the other direction, from the fossil fuel industry to universities, the study’s authors argue. The universities themselves often lack transparency when it comes to showing their funding ties, the study found, making it difficult to determine the true scope of financial spending by the fossil fuel industry.

“We call on universities around the world to disclose their financial and contractual ties with fossil fuel companies,” the authors wrote. “ We find that universities are an established yet under-researched vehicle of climate obstruction by the fossil fuel industry, complementary to its documented history of climate denial, delay, and lobbying. … Universities’ lack of transparency about their partnerships with this industry poses a challenge to empirical research.”

Backlash grows to oil and gas funding

In 2019, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had to change plans to name an auditorium after the oil company Shell following student and faculty pushback. And in 2022, Cambridge University removed oil and gas giant BP’s name from a building.

Supran, who studies climate disinformation and propaganda by fossil fuel interests, said without more research and transparency, it’s impossible to determine how much the industry spends on higher education: “The best numerical estimates are sort of significant underestimates.”

More than 500 academics have joined the call for universities to stop accepting money for research from the fossil fuel industry.

“Our concern is not with the integrity of individual academics,” the 2022 letter to U.S. and British universities read . “Rather, it is with the systemic issue posed by the context in which academics must work, one where fossil fuel industry funding can taint critical climate-related research.”

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Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.