Hydrogen Initiative Quiz!

We hope you enjoyed our first summer letter two weeks ago. Today, we write with answers to last letter’s quiz (at the bottom), as well as a new quiz, quote, and bit just for laughs. We’re also adding an “insight” section, which will feature a paper, article, or opinion piece we found, well, insightful. And at the bottom we have an exciting invitation!

Quiz

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

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

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

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

B: internship opportunities

C: a course on the “Hydrogen Economy”

Quote

Industry funding of education is not a new tactic. In fighting New Deal regulations in the 1920s, the National Electric Light Association (NELA), a trade association representing electric utilities chose to instill free-market ideology in U.S. university curriculum. The parallels to today’s fossil fuel industry efforts are striking. In their book The Big Myth science historians Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway, recount the effort:

“To be sure, faculty who worked with NELA were not marionettes. At Harvard, NELA abandoned a few projects when the business school ‘insisted that the final results should be published and should not become the exclusive property of those who have donated the money.’ But NELA generally had its way. On one occasion, NELA’s public relations chairman compared academics to mules, noting that ‘the individual mule in a team of twenty must be allowed to kick over the traces once in a while if he will.’ Professors needed some latitude, or the ‘credibility of the institution suffers,’ but there was little reason to worry if ‘occasionally a professor breaks loose on stuff that does not please us.’

“Despite its complaints about Harvard, NELA had an enthusiastic ally there; Professor Philip Cabot, a Boston Brahmin banker and director of several public utilities, who joined the Harvard Business School (HBS) in 1924. HBS offered two courses on public utilities, largely taught by guest lecturers from the local industry; a donation from NELA permitted the school to hire Cabot to teach the topic full-time. As part of a course on public utilities management and public utilities finance, Cabot invited industry executives to speak, but there is no evidence he ever invited a municipal electricity manager or advocate, much less a union representative.”

The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market, Oreskes and Conway, 2023, p. 61-62

Insight

“So what if fossil fuel lobbyists have to declare themselves at Cop28? That won’t curb their power,” writes journalist Amy Westervelt in her Guardian opinion.

“[I]t is actually the idea that fossil fuel executives are capable of leading a global transition away from their core product that is naive, and remarkably ahistorical. Fossil fuel companies have not only had a seat at the table for Cop’s entire history, they’ve run the table. Are we the better for it? Have they galvanised progress? Given that the big question in the lead-up to Cop28 is whether Al Jaber [managing director of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company] will allow a global treaty that specifically calls for the end of fossil fuel development and extraction, the answer is a painfully obvious no.”

Last Quiz’s Answers

The Stanford Doerr School’s Energy Modeling Forum, which “seeks to improve the use of energy and environmental policy models for making important corporate and government decisions” and which “publishes a summary report that is widely distributed to policymakers, corporate leaders, and energy experts and advisors,” lets its corporate affiliates “help frame the questions” it asks.

Question 1

Which of the following is not a sponsor of the Energy Modeling Forum?

Answer: D (First Solar). See here

Question 2

The energy modeling forum has as its current executive director…

Answer: B (The former leader of a fossil fuel lobby association). See bio here, with links to the National Petroleum Council and the United States Association for Energy Economics

Question 3

The Energy Modeling Forum’s 36th study, published in 2021, “Climate policies after Paris,” included economic costs of which of the following in its model:

Answer: A (Fossil-free infrastructure construction, to the exclusion of climate change and negative health impacts of pollution). The report clarifies:

“Across all scenarios, we do not account for the (monetized) benefits from avoided climate damages acknowledging the wide spread of estimates on the social cost of carbon. Thus, negative welfare impacts must be interpreted as gross economic adjustment costs to emission reductions from BaU and cannot be taken as an indicator for the desirability of emission reductions from a more comprehensive cost-benefit perspective.” (Bolding added)

One must ask oneself: will policymakers read far enough down in this report to encounter this colossal caveat?