FAQs about Fossil Fuel Funding at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability

Q : What is your ask of the Doerr School regarding fossil fuel funding?

A : We are calling on Stanford leaders to decline future funding to the Doerr School from fossil fuel companies. This excludes funding for individual faculty members, but includes any new or existing affiliate programs or institutes that are a part of the Doerr School (such as the Precourt Institute, the Industry Affiliate Programs, and the Energy Modeling Forum).

In particular we ask Doerr School administration to:

1. Commit to an open and transparent process for industry-funded research. This process should be transparent and based on quantifiable, Paris-aligned criteria. Research has shown that none of our current fossil fuel partners are Paris-aligned.

2. Commit to enforcing the criteria once they are published, and

3. Phase out institutional funding from industry partners that do not meet the criteria on a Paris-aligned timeline. Funding agreements between individual faculty members and these partners would not be affected.

Q : What are Stanford’s peer institutions doing to disentangle themselves from fossil fuel companies?

A : Stanford is falling behind many of its peers.

Some examples:

1. Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and Environment rejects research funding from all fossil fuel companies. If it ever did accept such funding, the Smith School would take money only from companies that are “committed to both the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.”

2. Princeton University will divest its endowment from all fossil fuel companies and will cut off research funding from companies extracting thermal coal and tar sands oil (this includes ExxonMobile, among many others).

3. Cambridge University is holding a democratic vote this year on whether to reject fossil fuel research funding.

Q : Why not take money from fossil fuel companies to fund research on solutions? It makes sense that the fossil fuel companies should help to pay for the damage they have done. Why not take their money and put it to good use?

A : The money the fossil fuel companies invest in research is trivial to them, but it does outsized damage to swift climate action.

Oil companies funding Stanford research are not significantly investing in green technologies. Eni, the only oil and gas major to disclose its investments, spent only 1.75% of its capital on renewable energy in 2019. Taking a tiny percentage of oil companies’ money is not making them meaningfully pay for the damage they’ve caused.

More troublingly, accepting fossil fuel money skews the research agenda in favor of a more moderate course than scientific consensus says is necessary. For example, scientists have been warning for over a decade that the majority of known oil reserves must remain in the ground in order to avoid a disastrous 2ºC of global temperature rise. Meanwhile, BP, Saudi Aramco, Chevron, Shell, Eni, and most other major oil companies continue to search for new oil reserves, and Stanford’s Exploration Project, an affiliate project slated to be included in the Doerr School, helps them do it.

Q : Given the scale of the problem, don’t we need the huge resources fossil fuel companies can bring to bear? Fossil fuel companies have massive resources around the globe, like infrastructure, equipment, and people to do big projects. Who else could build the wind farms or geo-thermal plants that we need? Doesn’t it make sense that they should donate to fund research that would help them make some of these changes?

A : The energy transition would be aided by the true collaboration of fossil fuel companies. However, the record shows that in almost every case, their actions undercut instead of advance sustainability. Fortunately, we can rapidly decarbonize without their help, and they can help without funding research.

We do need the resources of large companies — but these do not need to be fossil fuel companies. Eight of the ten largest renewable energy companies worldwide have no connection to fossil fuel infrastructure, and they are already mitigating gigatons of CO2 emissions. Through their efforts, the deployment of renewables has exponentially increased, despite fierce opposition from many, but not all, fossil fuel companies. We do need the renewable industry, but we do not need fossil fuel companies for the energy transition.

What if there is a fossil fuel company that does want to be part of the solution? There is nothing stopping them from harnessing the trove of Stanford’s published research on sustainability for their transition. But we do not need to give them the extra benefits that Stanford gives to “Industry Affiliates.” These benefits include informal connections with faculty, student recruitment, and access to research pre-prints, all of which give the companies ways to influence - and thus potentially detract from - research agendas more than they support the companies to transition to renewables.

Q : Can’t connections with Stanford be useful in shifting what fossil fuel companies are doing and cause or help them to change? Won’t connections with Stanford help fossil fuel companies do better? If fossil fuel companies are interested in sustainability, doesn’t it make sense to connect them with Stanford professors and students who can help them become more sustainable?

A : Numerous fossil fuel companies have funded sustainability research for decades without changing their core business. Meanwhile, the one major oil company which has become a renewables company did so only when its core business was threatened.

As a hypothetical, one might imagine that connections with Stanford could help fossil fuel companies transition to a sustainable business model. As scientists, though, we prefer evidence to hypotheticals. And the evidence is clear: Of all the fossil fuel companies funding Stanford sustainability research, only one, Eni, has transparently disclosed its investments in renewables, and its investment was only 1.75% of its total spending. Meanwhile, Eni continues to search for new oil reserves, an endeavor which is at odds with avoiding catastrophic levels of climate change. Decades-long collaboration with Stanford has not caused these companies to change.

Ørsted is a former oil and gas company that has changed its business model; it is now primarily in the business of renewable energy. What caused its transition? As quoted in John Doerr’s book Speed and Scale, Ørsted’s CEO Henrik Poulsen recounts: “Soon after I joined [the company that would become Ørsred] in August 2012, it found itself in deep crisis. S&P downgraded the debt…The legacy business… was quickly eroding. The liquified natural gas and gas storage business came under significant pressure, driven by the shale boom in the United States.” Ørsted changed when it was forced to change by low oil prices and cheap American natural gas — not because of academic affiliations.

Q : Isn’t it worth researching ways for fossil fuels to burn cleaner and more efficiently? Fossil fuel companies might not be interested in everyone switching off of oil and gas, but doesn’t it make sense for them to fund research that could make what they do cleaner, like making cars and power plants cleaner and more efficient?

A : Much of this incremental research will be obsolete before it is ready for actual use. Research on incremental improvements to fossil fuel use that won't be commercially applicable for years is a waste of resources. It redirects money, talent, and time away from genuine climate solutions, is at odds with the transition we need, and thus amounts to greenwashing.

Research on incremental improvements to the status quo operates on a longer timeline than the energy transition. For instance, a recent Stanford study partially funded by Saudi Aramco studied catalytic propene combustion for the purpose of “better emission control of internal combustion engines.” Fundamental lab-scale research like this often takes many years to be commercialized. This research agenda is out of sync with the energy transition: numerous countries are set to ban internal combustion vehicle sales by 2035, with the backing of major automakers, and electric cars are already cheaper to own than internal combustion cars. This is greenwashing, because this research will be obsolete before it will have a chance to be used.

Research on incremental advances that have a chance at deployment is hardly better. Rhetoric that pushes “pursuing all avenues” in sustainability fails to recognize opportunity cost. A researcher working to make, say, a gas-fired power plant a few percent more efficient is necessarily not working on grid-integration technologies for renewables, on decarbonizing cement or steel, on designing passive buildings, or on other endeavors that will actually accelerate the clean energy transition.

Q : Why paint the whole industry with a single brush? In particular, aren’t European oil companies working on sustainability?

A : We have researched all of Stanford’s fossil fuel funders individually. All of the fossil fuel companies funding sustainability research at Stanford are currently working to expand known oil reserves, actions that are calamitous for Earth's climate and only make sense if the plan is to keep burning fossil fuels well into the future. None have made meaningful progress towards sustainability.

While many European oil companies, such as BP, Eni, Total, and Shell, use more sustainability-focused messaging than their American counterparts, a peer-reviewed study published in 2022 reports that despite a “strong increase in discourse related to ‘climate,’ ‘low-carbon,’ and ‘transition,’ especially by BP and Shell… [a] financial analysis reveals a continuing business model dependence on fossil fuels along with insignificant and opaque spending on clean energy.” This study concludes that “the transition to clean energy business models is not occurring, since the magnitude of investments and actions does not match discourse.”

A 2022 audit found that six of the European oil companies funding Stanford research (BP, Eni, Equinor, Repsol, Shell, and Total) are still exploring for new oil reserves, approving new extraction projects, maintaining or increasing their oil production, continuing to lobby against climate solutions, and continuing to lie about the true climate impact of natural gas. A look at the websites of the rest of the European oil companies funding Stanford research quickly reveals that they are also still looking for new oil.

The European fossil fuel companies may seem different, but they are simply more proficient at greenwashing.

Q : Aren’t fossil fuels an inescapable part of our economy for the foreseeable future? Isn’t demonizing fossil fuel companies just reactive denialism?

A : Fossil fuels cannot be part of our economy for the foreseeable future if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change. We advocate disengaging with companies stalling climate action and perpetuating injustice, but if these companies meaningfully change their behavior we would be open to re-engaging.

As outlined in John Doerr’s book Speed and Scale, the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions can be eliminated with technology we have today. The non-profit RMI has shown how to profitably eliminate emissions from even the ‘tough to decarbonize’ sectors. Our economy has no need for fossil fuels in the long-term.

Our intent is not to demonize individual companies, but to avoid academic conflicts of interest, greenwashing, and climate action delay. We will not “hold a grudge.” Once a company has ceased operations that are unnecessary for our economy and calamitous for climate and has established a proven record of meaningful climate action, we would no longer advocate against partnering with them on sustainability research.

Q : Dean Majumdar already said in his 25 May 2022 letter to the School of Earth that the school “does not have plans to seek funding from oil and gas companies for its general operations.” Isn’t he saying the new school won’t take fossil fuel money?

A : Dean Majumdar's statement neglects all the institutional fossil fuel funding documented in this website.

We think the commitment not to take fossil fuel funding for the school’s general operations is an important one, yet it leaves unaddressed institutional fossil fuel funding through the Industrial Affiliates Program, the Precourt Institute for Energy, and the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum. At present we do not even know whether the School of Earth currently accepts fossil fuel funding for its general operations — if not, then Majumdar’s commitment does not represent any change in funding policy. If so, then his statement is an important step forward to untangling the new school from fossil fuels, that nonetheless leaves much to be done.

Q : Aren’t the big oil companies working on “carbon capture,” and isn’t that an important approach for fighting climate change? What is “carbon capture and sequestration”?  

A : The idea of CCS is to capture carbon as it is being produced, not to capture carbon already in the environment. Therefore, CCS requires continued CO2 emissions. The big oil companies are working on CCS, but as described below, CCS is not a crucial step for fighting climate change.

Q : Don’t we need to capture gigatons worth of CO2 in order to keep global temperature increase below 1.5ºC? Aren’t fossil fuel companies best-positioned to effectively “run their operations in reverse” and massively scale up carbon capture and storage (CCS)? 

A : Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a strategy typically used to make fossil fuel plants emit less carbon dioxide. The urgent need is to shut down these power plants. Depending on local conditions, fossil fuel power plants are already more expensive to maintain than renewables are to build AND maintain, or will be within several years. The majority of CCS capacity today goes toward pumping more oil and gas through a process called enhanced oil recovery. Investing in CCS redirects money, time, and talent away from cheaper, more rapidly-scaling CO2 mitigation strategies such as renewables and efficiency, and thus amounts to delay of and diversion from meaningful action on climate. What is urgent is to transition away from carbon-based fuels – not to figure out how to burn fossil fuels and then filter out some of the damage.

It is a matter of debate whether and how much CO2 would need to be captured in order to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5ºC. For instance, the two so-called “integrated assessment models” that attempt to model energy efficiency with close to the same level of detail applied to energy supply find that a 1.5ºC maximum temperature target could be achieved affordably with little or no carbon capture of any kind.

Even if we adopt the more traditional, supply-centric view that averting climate disaster does require carbon capture, the argument for CCS is weak. Let us first distinguish between two types of carbon removal: CCS captures and stores a percentage of CO2 as it is emitted from power plants. In order to work, CCS needs power plants to keep burning. In contrast, direct air capture with carbon storage (DACCS) captures CO2 directly from ambient air and thus does not require power plant operation—however, it will be incumbent upon policymakers to ensure that DACCS is not powered by fossil energy. 

According to the energy consulting firm Lazard, it is already cheaper to build and operate a new solar array than to continue operating an equally-sized coal power plant. Based on current trends, within approximately three years, it will become cheaper to build and operate a new solar array than to continue operating any type of existing fossil-fuel power plant. Thus, it does not make sense financially or for the climate to build new fossil-fueled power plants. Indeed, as demonstrated by levelized cost of energy (LCOE) estimates from Lazard and Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), it is almost always more cost-effective to retire a fossil-fueled power plant early and replace it with renewables than to retrofit it with CCS. 

Renewables are already beating CCS on the ground: The largest CCS project in the world aims to capture less than 0.02% of global CO2 emissions — and uses that CO2 to extract more oil. CCS plants often do not mitigate as much CO2 as they claim and miss their own capture targets. Solar electricity generation is already mitigating at least as much CO2 as all the world’s CCS plants every five days and is growing exponentially. And there appears to be little need for CCS-equipped power plants even to supply so-called “baseload power.” For instance, as reported in Yale Environment 360, “the ‘dark doldrums’ of European winters are often claimed to need many months of battery storage for an all-renewable electrical grid. Yet top German and Belgian grid operators find Europe would need only one to two weeks of renewably derived backup fuel, providing just 6 percent of winter output — not a huge challenge.”

CCS involves both new builds and retrofits that consume resources which could be spent more effectively on scaling up renewables and efficiency. These efforts delay the renewable energy transition that is necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change.