The University will resume accepting research funding from fossil fuel companies that fail to meet its dissociation criteria, according to an announcement released Thursday.
In the penultimate paragraph of the announcement is a caveat that the University will also “no longer publish the names of companies that meet the dissociation criteria and with which Princeton has had a relationship in the recent past.”
“Fossil fuel dissociation was the University’s first dissociation action that directly affected Princeton’s research enterprise. We have found that our initial approach not only had broad implications for current and future research projects, it also had a disparate and unfair impact across our faculty,” explained Provost Jennifer Rexford, Dean of the Faculty Gene Jarrett ’97, and Dean for Research Peter Schiffer. “They lost not only outside funding for research to combat the harms of climate change, but also access to collaborative partnerships focused on important work that is aligned with the University’s values.”
Princeton made the decision to disassociate from 90 fossil fuel companies in September 2022 as “a result of a community-initiated, two-year process that engaged a range of campus stakeholders.” By February 2024, “the number of companies subject to dissociation has expanded from 90 to 2,371” as a result of newly-available data.
Going forward, the University will allow funds if they “support only research projects aimed toward the amelioration of environmental harms of carbon emissions”; the faculty who are supported by the funds retain the ability to publish their results; and the funding must be in the form of “sponsored research grants that support research projects.”
The University has already completed dissociation from 29 companies as of January 2024, including ExxonMobil Corporation, Syncrude Canada Ltd, and BHP Group Ltd. In 2018, BP completed a $10.5 billion acquisition of BHP’s assets. BP currently sponsors High Meadows Institutes’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI).
An additional eight companies were removed from the dissociation list, according to the announcement, because the University no longer receives any funding from them. The memo only lists the dissociated companies with which the University “has a current or recent relationship that involved a financial component.”
In 2023, an Exxon official told The Guardian that the company had contributed over $10.7 million in research funds to the University over the past 10 years. The University annual sponsored research report has disclosed that researchers have received $848,140 from Exxon in Fiscal Year 2023 alone, while Syncrude contributed $104,165 during the same period.
The University also maintains ties with several other significant oil companies that were not included on the dissociation list, including Shell USA, Inc., which invested $119,942 in FY2023
This announcement comes around two weeks after the release of a Sunrise Princeton report, which 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.”
“This completely invalidates the years of advocacy by students, faculty, staff, and alumni who worked with the University and went through their bureaucratic processes,” Hannah Reynolds ’22, a leader of Divest Princeton, wrote in a statement to The Daily Princetonian. “This shows that Princeton doesn’t care about its own policies or bureaucratic practices unless it results in the outcome that benefits its short-term financial interests.”
The University has also faced federal scrutiny on its research when a joint congressional report was released on the efforts by fossil fuel companies to evade climate change initiatives. The report included a chapter about the potential influences of BP on climate research conducted by the CMI.
In response to allegations that Princeton’s research was influenced by fossil fuel companies’ financial contributions, Director of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI) and Professor Emeritus Stephen Pacala dismissed concerns.
“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 an interview with The Daily Princetonian in the spring.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this piece erroneously stated that the University would halt using fossil fuel research funds from dissociated companies. The ‘Prince’ regrets this error and made a correction to the piece minutes after publication.
Victoria Davies is an assistant News editor for the ‘Prince’ who covers University Operations.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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