Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON: A recent study has revealed that six fossil fuel companies funneled more than $700 million in research funding from 2010 to 2020 to 27 universities in the United States.
The report’s authors argue that such funding at universities that conduct climate research can shift research agendas and policy in the direction of climate solutions preferred by the industry.
According to research by the think tank ‘Data for Progress’ and the nonprofit group ‘Fossil-Free Research’, these solutions are typically based on biofuels, hydrogen, and carbon capture. Oil firms invest in public policy and economics research that favours deregulation.
“700 million dollars is probably the absolute bare minimum,” polling analyst for Data for Progress, Grace Adcox, said. “And there’s so little transparency around these gifts.”
Famous fund recipients
The five famous US schools on the list include a few that champion their climate research, like the University of California at Berkeley, $154 million; Stanford University, $56.6 million and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, $40.5 million, and those with long-standing fossil fuel ties, like George Mason University, $64 million, the largest recipient of funding from the Koch Foundation.
These schools have long been the targets of campus divestment campaigns, with students and faculty urging administrators to pull university aids from fossil fuel companies; Berkeley fully divested in 2020, and Stanford and MIT’s resistance to the plan has resulted in a student-led lawsuit.
Asked about the fresh research, many universities described measures they had taken to mitigate concerns and pointed to more recent reductions in accepting donations.
The report includes a poll indicating that 67% of college-educated and non-college-educated voters agree: “Universities and colleges studying the impacts of climate change and sustainability should reject donations from fossil fuel companies so they can remain unbiased in their research.”
