A new report by student-run climate advocacy group Sunrise Princeton argues that, despite having cut ties with certain major fossil fuel producers two years ago, the University continues “to invest in, profit from, and produce research that serves the interests of fossil fuel companies.”
The report, titled “In the Service of Delay: Fossil Fuel Connections to Princeton University,” was released on Wednesday, Sept. 18 by Sunrise alongside analysis from student climate advocates at five other universities.
The report’s analysis of Princeton’s tax returns includes a reported $350 million in University revenue from oil and gas extraction over the past decade. The report also details that major fossil fuel companies — including BP, Exxon, Shell, and TotalEnergies — have provided over $43 million in research funding to Princeton in the last 10 years.
The Sunrise report comes five months after the release of a joint congressional report on efforts by fossil fuel companies to evade climate change initiatives, including a chapter about the potential influences of oil and gas company BP on climate research conducted by the University’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI).
In a 2020 email obtained by congressional investigators, a BP official wrote that the relationship between BP and CMI was “becoming increasingly synergistic.” The congressional report raised concerns about BP’s influence on the Net Zero America study, a 2020 Princeton study examining methods of decarbonization for the United States economy.
In an interview with The Daily Princetonian in the spring, Director of CMI and Professor Emeritus Stephen Pacala dismissed the comments from BP officials as “internal chortling, where a person responsible for keeping tabs on a relationship that they’re funding is making a case to his superiors.”
“Since then, our conclusions have been completely out of alignment with [BP’s] wishes,” he added.
Alex Norbrook ’26, one of the authors of Sunrise Princeton’s report, disagrees.
“What we’re doing is showing how BP’s internal rhetoric translates into direct outputs from CMI’s research, from its messaging and from its rhetoric about BP,” he told the ‘Prince.’ “That’s making the connection between what we know from the House investigation and what we know here on the ground.”
Norbrook is a columnist for the ‘Prince.’
Norbrook said that Sunrise’s findings strengthen “the argument that Princeton does indeed own a fossil fuel company.”
Norbrook was referring to PetroTiger, an oil and gas company from which the University reported $140 million of earnings in investment income and cash transactions over a 10-year period. According to the report, the exact scope of the University’s relationship with PetroTiger is unclear, however, PetroTiger has been listed as a “related organization” on the University’s tax returns as recently as 2021, the ‘Prince’ found.
A University administrator declined to comment on PetroTiger when contacted by a Sunrise organizer, writing that the University does not discuss individual investments. The University also did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication from the ‘Prince.’
A tally by Sunrise found that the University has reported $352.5 million over the past decade on its tax returns under revenue code 211110, which the Internal Revenue Service classifies as oil and gas extraction.
University Spokesperson Jennifer Morrill referred the ‘Prince’ to the University’s website on fossil fuel dissociation, but did not address questions about the origins of the University’s reported fossil fuel income.
In February, the University announced that it had completed its divestment of endowment holdings in publicly traded fossil fuel companies. The University had previously established a list of companies subject to dissociation that included ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips.
Sunrise also argued that their independent analysis claimed that, of 210 papers written by University-affiliated authors who received funding from energy companies, “14.8 percent of the papers contained explicit applications for continued or expanded fossil fuel use, and 12.9 percent contained an implicit fossil fuel application.”
Pacala argued that Sunrise’s analysis showed that BP was not influencing research at the University, as 72 percent of the papers noted in Sunrise’s argument did not enable continued or expanded fossil fuel use.
“I think that if you look at that dispassionately, you’ll say, ‘Princeton’s doing everything right.’ I think there’s no evidence of undue influence, and I think there’s strong evidence to the contrary,” he said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’
CMI has received support from BP since it was founded in 2000. According to the congressional report, BP gave CMI between $2.1 and $2.6 million annually from 2012 to 2017.
“You will have to trust me, other professors at Princeton who are involved, or BP people’s word that we simply don’t consult the company when picking projects,” Pacala said.
In its report, Sunrise also pointed to a statement from Brunswick Group, a public relations firm hired by BP. The company “identified CMI as a ‘core programme’ to help BP demonstrate its seriousness on the so-called ‘methane challenge’ by publishing articles on the methane cycle.”
“Usually, the way in which sponsor’s representatives get to influence projects is spelled out in great detail,” Pacala said, acknowledging what he called “pitfalls” that occur when the University works with for-profit founders.
At the conclusion of its report, Sunrise Princeton reaffirmed that it is seeking the University to cut all ties with fossil fuel companies, recommending the University divest from all privately-held fossil fuel companies. It also calls for the short-term expansion of the Fund for Energy Research with Corporate Partners, which helps offset funding no longer available for research because of fossil fuel dissociation.
“Our immediate next steps are to meet with the University administration to have a conversation with them about learning more about the trustee’s decision to arbitrarily divest from at least some parts of [PetroTiger],” Norbrook said at a press conference on Wednesday.
“These findings … demonstrate that the University, despite its goals for sustainability on its own campus, helped perpetuate the viability of the fossil fuel industry in a way that’s inconsistent both with scientific consensus and with the University’s own core values.”
Ethan Caldwell is a staff News writer for the ‘Prince.’
Sena Chang is a News contributor for the ‘Prince.’
Meghana Veldhuis is an assistant News editor for the ‘Prince.’ She is from Bergen County, N.J. and typically covers faculty and graduate students.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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