Fossil fuel companies donated $700m to US universities over 10 years
Six fossil fuel companies funneled nearly$700m in research funding to 27 universities in the US from 2010 to 2020, according to a new study.
Such funding at universities that conduct climate research can shift not just research agendas, but also policy in the direction of climate solutions the industry prefers, the report’s authors argue.
Those solutions typically include biofuels, carbon capture, and hydrogen, according to the research by the thinktank Data for Progress and the nonprofit group Fossil-Free Research. Oil majors also invest in public policy and economics research that favors deregulation.
“$700m is probably an absolute bare minimum,” Grace Adcox, operations director for Data for Progress, said. “There’s so little transparency around these gifts.”
The top five schools on the list, include some that champion their climate research, like University of California at Berkeley ($108m), Stanford University ($56.6m) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology ($40.5m), as well as those with long-standing fossil fuel ties, like George Mason University ($64m), the largest recipient of funding from the Koch Foundation.
These schools have also long been the targets of campus divestment campaigns, with students and faculty urging administrators to pull university funds from fossil fuel companies; Berkeley fully divested in 2020, Stanford and MIT’s resistance to the idea has resulted in astudent-led lawsuit.
Asked about the new research, several universities described measures they had taken to mitigate concerns, or pointed to more recent reductions in accepting donations.
The report includes a poll indicating that a majority (67%) of both college-educated and non-college-educated voters agree with the statement: “Colleges and
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