Hydrogen and Natural Gas Initiative Info
Happy July everybody!
We got some feedback that the “quiz” format isn’t the friendliest to people not already versed in the tentacles of fossil fuel funding in the Doerr School, so we’re switching things up this week. Rather than a quiz, we’ll just share a scoop about different domains of fossil fuel influence at Stanford. We’ll continue with our quote, insight, and laughs sections. We’ll also provide a bit of context to the answers from last letter’s quiz on the Hydrogen Initiative.
Answers and Context on Last Week’s Scoop!
Hydrogen Initiative: answers to last letter’s quiz and some context
As a reminder, the Stanford Hydrogen Initiative counts ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, SK, and Toyota among its financial backers.
Question 1) The Hydrogen Initiative’s two-member advisory council consists of:
A: A former chief scientist at Shell and a former executive engineer at Toyota [correct answer]
B: A former chief scientist at ExxonMobil and a former chemist for Chevron
C: A former director of engineering at the U.S. Department of Energy and a former scientist at the EPA
D: A professor emeritus of chemistry and a professor emeritus of mechanical engineering
Shell and Toyota have purchased seats on the Hydrogen Initiative’s advisory council for $250,000 per year. While the Hydrogen Initiative doesn’t elaborate on the power of the advisory council, if it is anything like the governing board of the Natural Gas Initiative, then the Advisory Council helps to establish research priorities and suggest projects for seed funding. Shell invests approx. 1.5% of its capex into renewables (duplicitous accounting notwithstanding), and is pulling back from further investment after record oil and gas profits. Toyota is the only auto manufacturer to make it into InfluenceMap’s top-ten list of most obstructive companies on climate policy. It isn’t a huge leap to imagine the types of research that representatives from these companies will steer the initiative towards: research that entrenches chemical fuels and delays the energy transition. Indeed, some focus areas of the Hydrogen Initiative are already heading this way, and include projects on converting hydrogen into liquid fuels and even methane (a notoriously leaky greenhouse gas).
Question 2) In addition to sponsoring research, the Hydrogen Initiative sponsors a class marketed to undergraduates and graduate students (it also sponsors a podcast). Based on the syllabus on the website, the course has three primary instructors: a professor, the managing director of the Natural Gas Initiative, and the Managing Director of the Corporate Affiliates program. The three guest speakers were representatives from:
A: two different oil supermajors that are currently spreading climate disinformation, and a government energy regulator
B: a company selling hydrogen, an environmental justice organization opposed to blue hydrogen, and an air quality regulator
C: A natural gas utility with a recent history of climate obstructionism, an industry trade group representing ammonia manufacturers, and a company selling hydrogen [correct answer]
One would hope that outside speakers would provide diverse (and potentially critical) perspectives in a class. This course’s instructors (Naomi Boness, managing director of the Natural Gas Initiative, Jimmy Chen, Managing director of the Corporate Affiliates Program, and Xiaolin Zheng, a professor) did not. Instead, they invited outside speakers exclusively representing groups with strong financial interests in seeing hydrogen used as much as possible, whether or not it actually makes sense (SoCal gas — parent company Sempra Energy, the Ammonia Energy Association, and Electric Hydrogen). It would be beneficial to these companies’ bottom-line if an entire “Hydrogen Economy” sprung up — conveniently, the name of the course.
Question 3) The Hydrogen Initiative advertises membership benefits to its corporate sponsors, which include “student engagement.” Which of the following does the Hydrogen Initiative sponsor under the header “education” (formerly “student engagement” in an old version of the website):
A: a “Hydrogen Club” offering networking opportunities [correct answer]
B: internship opportunities [correct answer]
C: a course on the “Hydrogen Economy” [correct answer]
Trick question! All three are correct. One major gift Stanford gives fossil fuel companies in exchange for funding research is the opportunity to engage with students. This helps develop a recruitment pipeline, associate friendly faces with the companies in the minds of students, and get students framing problems and questions in ways favorable to the company. For instance, fossil fuel companies might prefer students ask “how do we retrofit natural gas pipelines to work for hydrogen so we can burn hydrogen in stoves, furnaces, and water heaters?” rather than “how can we most quickly, equitably, cheaply, and with lowest-risk slash emissions from stoves, furnaces, water heaters while providing people with hot meals and showers and comfortable homes?”
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This Week’s Scoop: the Natural Gas Initiative!
Stanford has a Natural Gas Initiative (NGI) dedicated to “generat[ing] the knowledge needed to use natural gas to its greatest social, economic, and environmental benefit.” The initiative sells permanent seats on its governance board, along with other benefits, for $250,000 per year to “sustaining members” (rotating seats are sold at lower prices). At present, the four sustaining members are ConocoPhillips, Shell, ExxonMobil, and GTI Energy. The NGI also partners with the Energy Leadership Institute, an organization founded in 2012 by the Colorado Oil & Gas Association with an aim of training “thought leaders” who would be influential in energy policy.
In addition to publishing peer-reviewed papers, the NGI produces non-peer-reviewed “Briefs,” essentially operating like a think tank. Despite avoiding the accountability of peer-review, these briefs nonetheless carry the weight of the Stanford name. Let us use as an example one recent brief authored by NGI Managing Director Naomi Boness. For context, Boness is a 13-year veteran of upstream strategy at Chevron, the world’s most climate-obstructive company according to InfluenceMap. Boness is also a current member of the Renewable Natural Gas Coalition Advisory Committee (which is funded by fossil fuel companies and which has lobbied to weaken guidance on clean hydrogen production), and was past Chair of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists Oil and Gas Reserves Committee.
The brief’s penultimate paragraph captures the overall message:
“The United States has the natural resources and economic strength to significantly add to the world’s LNG [liquified natural gas] supply, strengthen energy security, replace dirtier fuels and lower global carbon emissions. The problem is that our system for approving infrastructure makes it nearly impossible to develop our resources and bring them to market. Until we fundamentally change our approach, we should expect little progress.”
In other words, the US should increase its gas infrastructure and export it, mostly to developing countries. This narrative, promoted in a non-peer-reviewed paper whose sole author is a longtime fossil fuel strategist, is almost identical to the narrative promoted by fossil-fuel front groups. For instance, take Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future, a group funded by pipeline and gas companies (including Kinder Morgan, which also funds the Natural Gas Initiative) and by plumbers associations (who would lose work if gas infrastructure were obsolete). Natural Allies says that:
“A major solution to help curb carbon emissions, support American jobs, and provide global energy security is to export U.S. Liquified Natural Gas (LNG). The benefits of transporting affordable natural gas to developing nations and Europe allows new economies abroad to flourish, helps secure current energy grids from potential crisis, and prevents bad foreign actors from withholding needed energy supply to our allies.”
It isn’t just that the pro-gas-expansion narrative promoted by Boness’ brief aligns with that of the gas industry. There isn’t anything intrinsically wrong with agreeing with oil and gas companies. More troublingly, Boness’ narrative is contradicted by perspectives and research papers published in respected scientific journals in which material must survive peer-review. There are many such papers, but here are a few examples:
From a recent perspective in Nature Energy:
“We highlight that natural gas is a fossil fuel with a significantly underestimated climate impact that hinders decarbonization through carbon lock-in and stranded assets. We propose five ways to avoid common shortcomings for countries that are developing strategies for greenhouse gas reduction: manage methane emissions of the entire natural gas value chain, revise assumptions of scenario analyses with new research insights on greenhouse gas emissions related to natural gas, replace the ‘bridge’ narrative with unambiguous decarbonization criteria, avoid additional natural gas lock-ins and methane leakage, and take climate-related risks in energy infrastructure planning seriously.”
From a 2016 paper in Applied Energy, authored by several Stanford scholars:
“Natural gas has been suggested as a “bridge fuel” in the transition from coal to a near-zero emission energy system. However, the expansion of natural gas risks a delay in the introduction of near-zero emission energy systems, possibly offsetting the potential climate benefits of a gas-for-coal substitution… Considering only physical climate system effects, we find that there is potential for delays in deployment of near-zero-emission technologies to offset all climate benefits from replacing coal energy systems with natural gas energy systems, especially if natural gas leakage is high, the natural gas energy system is inefficient, and the climate change metric emphasizes decadal time scale changes.”
From a 2021 paper in Nature:
“…we find that nearly 60 per cent of oil and fossil methane gas, and 90 per cent of coal must remain unextracted to keep within a 1.5 °C carbon budget… This implies that most regions must reach peak production now or during the next decade, rendering many operational and planned fossil fuel projects unviable.” In other words, fossil infrastructure expansion, such as that proposed by Stanford’s Boness and by fossil front groups like Natural Allies, is incompatible with the Paris Agreement.
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Quote 1
“The first step in building a superior workforce is to identify and recruit the best and the brightest. We have established the University Partnerships and Association Relations (UPAR) program to help us do just that. The UPAR program has forged strategic relationships with numerous colleges, universities and associations around the globe… We consider these educational partnerships to be strategic investments in the economic development of local communities and the future of the energy business… A portion of the program focuses on bringing together schools around the world to strengthen faculty, curriculum and student development… In the United States, UPAR partners with several major universities, including… Stanford University…
“Our involvement provides national and local chapter sponsorship, scholarships and recruitment into our workforce. Beyond recruiting, UPAR develops and funds programs that support our business strategies, primarily through research and development.” —Chevron Website, “University Partnerships”
Quote 2
“We’re partnering with major universities to develop the next generation of biofuels,” —Chevron Advertisement in The New Yorker, 2007
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Insight
Physicist, lawyer, science historian, Stanford graduate, and Senior Research Fellow in Climate Litigation at Oxford’s Sustainable Law Programme writes for the Union of Concerned Scientists after questioning Chevron’s CEO, Mike Wirth, at Chevron’s shareholder meeting in May 2019. He writes, in part:
“Chevron and other fossil fuel producers knew their products would cause the climate change damages we’re now experiencing, such as sea level rise, drought, and flooding. First, these companies failed to warn the public despite studying the problem privately. Then, they actively denied the problem, spread disinformation, and blocked attempts to prevent the damage –- practices Chevron and its peers continue to this day…
“That brings us to lawsuits. A variety of cities, states, and private groups… are bringing suits against fossil fuel companies in order to be compensated for climate-related damages resulting from the industry’s products and corporate behavior.
“Chevron is a defendant in at least eight of these suits so far, and more are being filed regularly. These lawsuits expose fossil fuel producers — and their shareholders — to significant liability risks.
“My question for Michael Wirth, Chevron’s CEO, was simple: How will the company protect shareholders from its own history of disinformation?
“His answer was part avoidance and part additional disinformation. Wirth stated, without rationale, that the growing number of lawsuits facing the company won’t help to address global warming (a claim the plaintiffs presumably disagree with). He then went on to tell shareholders that the suits bring “no new science” and “no new evidence” to the table.
“Both claims are false. Attribution science — the epidemiology of climate change — is central to these lawsuits and can causally link Chevron’s products to damages from global warming.
“Additionally, historical researchers continue to uncover more and more evidence of industry knowledge, denial, and malfeasance. These two prongs — science and history — proved devastating to Big Tobacco in American courts, and Big Oil may be next. That’s likely why fossil fuel producers are now seeking legal immunity from climate lawsuits in exchange for a small carbon tax.
“Chevron’s CEO might be misinformed about these lawsuits. Or he might be lying to shareholders. Either way, it’s not a good look for Chevron.”
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Laughs
In honor of Chevron’s close ties with the leadership of Stanford’s Hydrogen and Natural Gas Initiatives, and celebrating Chevron’s rise to first place on InfluenceMap’s list of most climate-obstructive companies globally, we wanted to share some material on Chevron from Don’t Look Up director Adam McKay’s YellowDot Studios. Click on the image to view the video.
