A former Exxon executive sits on a university’s board of trustees. Fossil fuel representatives develop undergraduate courses. Schools lease out their land for fracking. Industry-funded studies end up influencing federal energy policy.

These aren’t just isolated examples of oil and gas companies partnering with academic institutions, according to a new study published in the journal WIREs Climate Change by researchers with six universities, but an international effort by the industry spanning decades with the goal of obstructing and slowing down climate action. 

The authors came to that conclusion by conducting a first-ever review of dozens of existing academic and civil society investigations into fossil fuel infiltration of higher education, looking primarily at institutions in the U.S., UK, Canada, and Australia.

“When you pull it all together, you realize how pervasive a strategy this has been,” Jennie Stephens, a professor of climate justice at Ireland’s Maynooth University who co-authored the study, told DeSmog. 

That campaign has been developed over decades, evidence cited in the paper suggests, including a leaked 1998 strategy memo from the American Petroleum Institute that called for promoting “peer-reviewed papers that undercut the ‘conventional wisdom’ on climate science,” as well as organizing a series of campus debates about climate science. 

The study’s researchers also point to a 2017 memo from a public relations firm advising BP that partnering with Princeton University could help with “authenticating BP’s commitment to low carbon,” even as the company expanded its production of oil and gas. BP’s plans have also involved proposals for funding academic papers “highlighting [the] role of gas as a friend to renewables.”

Oil companies including Shell and Exxon have in recent years made sizeable donations to Louisiana State University, and in turn been allowed by the school to review academic studies and influence research activities, a separate Guardian investigation revealed in April.

“We know of hundreds of conflicts of interest when it comes to fossil fuel interests and academics at universities,” Geoffrey Supran, another co-author of the study who is director of the Climate Accountability Lab at the University of Miami, told DeSmog. 

“The industry has been getting away with very little scrutiny when it comes to its infiltration of academia,” he added. 

Wide Implications

This has implications far beyond academia, the paper, called, “Fossil fuel industry influence in higher education: A review and a research agenda” argues. It references a 2022 study in the journal Nature Climate Change where researchers analyzed language from reports produced by 26 university centers set up to study energy systems. The centers that had received large amounts of fossil fuel funding described renewable energy more critically and had a more positive view of natural gas than the centers without significant oil and gas funding, according to the study. 

One of those industry-funded centers, MIT’s Energy Initiative, produced a 2011 report endorsing natural gas as a “bridge to a low-carbon future.” Its lead author Ernest Moniz later briefed a Senate committee on the report and many of its findings were included in President Obama’s 2012 energy policy. Obama then appointed Moniz as secretary of energy.

“Legitimizing the idea that natural gas is a bridging fuel for the low-carbon transition has had a huge influence on climate and energy policy,” Stephens said. “And that has allowed perpetuation of fossil fuels.”

The study also references a 2015 CBC investigation revealing that the pipeline company Enbridge set up a business school research center at the University of Calgary to help boost its public image after one of its pipelines leaked three million liters of oil into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River.

“The fact that Enbridge has a spill in Michigan and now wants to use this investment as a way to make amends and possibly receive some positive PR is acceptable,” one university administrator told CBC at the time.  

In other cases, oil and gas companies sought to influence what is taught to students. The paper cites research showing that BP, Shell, and Equinor advised Oxford University and University College London on science and engineering courses. Exxon has worked with London Business School on providing an ExxonMobil Graduate Development Programme. 

Representatives of the fossil fuel industry have similarly helped develop an undergraduate program at the University of Western Australia, the study notes. 

The paper describes a growing backlash from students and researchers against these partnerships. Activists on university campuses are demanding that their schools dissociate from the fossil fuel industry — that is, end funding relationships and create stricter policies for mitigating academic conflicts of interest. 

This is already common practice when it comes to higher education’s relationships with the pharmaceutical and tobacco industries, Supran argued. Princeton University is taking steps in this direction. Supran said many more university leaders need to reckon with their roles in perpetuating a climate-destabilizing industry.

“Right now the issue is not that universities are thinking about how to grapple with this problem,” he said. “They are failing to even acknowledge that there is a problem.”