UniversidadxClimaJun 18, 2025
How #BigOil’s big money influences #climateresearch
A new study offers the first comprehensive look at the ties between #fossilfuel companies and #universities
#Greenwashing #AcademicGreenwashing #ecoblanqueoacadémico
https://grist.org/accountability/fossil-fuel-funding-influence-university-climate-research/
How Big Oil’s big money influences climate research

A new study offers the first comprehensive look at the ties between fossil fuel companies and universities. It's not pretty.

Grist
Show threadUniversidadxClimaJun 18, 2025
For more than a decade, students have been begging their #universities to stop investing in #oil #gascompanies. In 2019, protesters stormed the field of a #Harvard-Yale football game at halftime, yelling, “Hey hey, ho ho! #Fossilfuels have got to go!” Hundreds of schools have now taken steps to divest (Harvard, at least in part, Yale) many campus #climateactivists are moving onto the next phase: calling on schools to end their ties with fossil fuel money altogether, rejecting #grants and funding
Show threadUniversidadxClimaJun 18, 2025
According to a new study published in the peer-reviewed journal #WIREs #ClimateChange, these activists have good reason to suspect that oil money might influence #academicresearch. It’s the first comprehensive look at the extensive ties between #BigOil and #universities, uncovering hundreds of instances in which #fossilfuel funding may have led to conflict of interests for researchers in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. #ecoblanchiment #greenwashingacadémico
Show threadUniversidadxClimaJun 18, 2025
The scale of influence is huge, involving thousands of #partnerships at hundreds of universities, according to Jennie Stephens, a co-author of the paper, professor of #climate #justice at #MaynoothUniversity in #Ireland “We think of #universities as for the public good, advancing knowledge for better futures for all of us" said “Whereas I think the scale & scope of influence of the #fossilfuel industry on #highereducation shows that some of that is being distorted toward private sector interests
Show threadUniversidadxClimaJun 18, 2025
and away from the public interest.”
Though the full extent of this funding remains unknown, since universities are reluctant to disclose that information, an analysis from the #thinktank Data for Progress last year found that Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron, Shell Oil, ConocoPhillips, Koch Industries donated at least $677 million to 27 U.S. #universities from 2010 to 2020. The largest recipients identified were the #UniversityofCalifornia, #Berkeley; the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign;
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and #GeorgeMasonUniversity.

There’s already evidence that such relationships can sway the direction of academic studies. Reports published in 2009 and 2010 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and #StanfordUniversity — all of which received significant funding from #oilcompanies — were biased in favor of #naturalgas compared to independent research, one study published in the journal #Nature in 2022 found.

Jun 18, 2025 at 7:25pmMastodon for Android
Show threadUniversidadxClimaJun 18, 2025

Some research contracts allow oil companies to restrict what research gets published and provide them control over academic governing boards.

One case outlined in the new study was the pipeline company Enbridge’s funding of the University of Calgary’s business school (called the Enbridge Centre for Corporate Sustainability before it was renamed in 2014). Enbridge held the right to stop funding the Canadian research center at any time if it was dissatisfied, and the company sought to have a

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say in staffing and who sat on the center’s board, as well as create opportunities for its executives and clients to meet with researchers.

The study in #WIREsClimateChange makes the case that the relationships oil companies have forged with universities are part of a broader effort to delay political action on #globalwarming, a #tactic that complements the industry’s history of sowing doubt about the science and l#obbying to prevent climate-friendly legislation.

Show threadUniversidadxClimaJun 18, 2025
Fossil fuel funding also tends to skew research toward the industry’s preferred #technologicalsolutions, such as carbon capture & storage, away from phasing out oil & gas, according to Stephens.
“The industry research is not necessarily directly impacting the integrity of specific research studies,” she said. “It’s more orienting academic research towards certain kinds of responses to the climate crisis, which are really not transformative at all, they’re actually reinforcing the status quo.”
Show threadThiloJun 18, 2025

@UniversidadxClima

Thank you for this important thread — it highlights how fossil fuel funding doesn’t just distort research agendas, but also reflects deeper systemic barriers to climate action.

One core barrier is financial timing: fossil fuel projects attract capital because their upfront costs are low and returns come fast, while clean energy demands heavy upfront investment despite being cheaper long-term.

#PostGrowth #CleanEnergy #GreenFinance #ClimateJustice

Show threadThiloJun 18, 2025

@UniversidadxClima

If we want to break the status quo beyond greenwashing, we must rethink how capital flows, enabling public banks and funds to buy time for clean energy’s growth.

My latest blog post dives into this problem and proposes solutions:
https://eduzen.bearblog.dev/upfront-capital-kills-clean-energy-lets-fix-that/

#PostGrowth #CleanEnergy #GreenFinance #ClimateJustice

Upfront Capital Kills Clean Energy. Let’s Fix That.

Clean energy has already won the race—at least on paper. Solar and wind are, by now, the cheapest ways to generate electricity over their entire lifecycle...

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